


None But the Lonely Heart

by OccasionalAvenger



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 106,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalAvenger/pseuds/OccasionalAvenger
Summary: featuring: the quiet isle, the brotherhood without banners, chekov's wolfpack, someone's bloody wedding, brienne in king's landing, a messy custody battle, dad jaime, het sex written by a baffled lesbian, and endgame.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Cersei Lannister & Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 588
Kudos: 394





	1. Chapter 1

“I suppose you had better explain yourself,” says the Elder Brother at last, and Jaime Lannister wonders what he did with his life before he became the kind of man who always has explaining to do.

“You first,” he says. His head is tipped back against the wall to stave off the pounding in his temple that hasn’t entirely gone away. “How is it that you came to have Sandor Clegane tucked away on your Isle? The last we heard of him in King’s Landing, he was vanished at worst, dead at best. You can imagine my surprise at finding him here shoveling snow.”

“Sandor Clegane is dead,” the Elder Brother replies easily, just as he had when Jaime first exclaimed at the sight of the Hound. “However...the Faith turns away none who seek its help.” _Elsewise you would not be here,_ goes unsaid, but the set of the Elder Brother’s jaw is clear as any cutting remark. Jaime isn’t sure what to think of the man, who with his square jaw and callused hands looks more like a seasoned foot-soldier than the fat, perfumed men of the Faith Jaime had known in King’s Landing. He has the same talent for dodging difficult questions, however.

“Perhaps I did not make myself clear.” And now the Elder Brother is sitting forward. Those sharp eyes. “Explain to me now why my Brothers are gone and you are here.”

“They are not gone. They are sleeping very soundly just out there.” His golden hand catches the firelight as he waves it vaguely at the window. The game is very much over now; probably, it had been when the Elder Brother slipped in the door with a raised eyebrow and more wood for the fire, but Jaime never does know when enough is enough. 

He sighs. “We have been through much.”

The Elder Brother waits. 

“Much that is my fault. Much that could have been avoided if I were half the man she seems to think I am.”

“Many who arrive here believe themselves responsible for some horrible crime. Often it is simply the crime of being a man and not a god. I think, ser, that few horrible things in this world are the fault of one man.”

“When she wakes, ask her who she hanged for.” Jaime stands and looks out the window. The poor sods he had whacked with his golden hand will be waking soon. One of them had tried to explain that only the Elder Brother was allowed with Brienne alone, as though Jaime had not known that. His breath fogs against the warped glass. “Anyhow, I think you well know my crimes. To leave her alone would be yet another.”

“You are here as a kindness, then.”

Jaime rolls his eyes. “I am here because if not for me, she would not be dying.”

“She is not dying. Not anymore. But it was a near thing.” The Elder Brother presses a hand to Brienne’s forehead. Jaime watches, the first time he has looked at her now that they are not alone. She looks as if she is dying still, pale hair plastered to the gray skin of her face, her broken body looking almost small under a mountain of furs. If Jaime were to pull them back, he would find her stomach tightly wrapped by a white bandage that wants changing twice a day. Keeping everything inside.

How she had fought that day! Even now the thought gives Jaime a thrill. A Trial of Seven in no way that the gods had ever intended it, one woman against seven men. The Brotherhood’s champions were every one of them war-hardened and starving to be the man to write an end to Jaime Lannister. But Brienne fought like a demon, snarling and spitting at the mouth as she cut them down, all of them, one by one. She took more wounds than Jaime could count; his blood went cold every time a blade darted past her guard. It was the last man who got her. Swords long discarded, they fought hand-to-hand in the mud, tearing at each other’s hair and eyes and armor until the man pinned Brienne against his chest from below and slashed his dagger clean across her stomach. Jaime could not hear her scream above his own. She fought free somehow, blood spilling, and closed her hand on Oathkeeper in time to spin on her knees and rend the man almost in half. 

Brienne collapsed to the dirt. Silence followed. 

The thing that used to be Catelyn Stark looked at Jaime. “Go, then,” it said, and in a rush of movement the Brotherhood vanished from the clearing, leaving behind only prisoners, corpses, and a dying champion. Jaime’s champion.

He rushed to her side, shouting at the boy to help him and at the man to find the horses where Brienne left them beside the road. The blood, the blood, the boy crying. Jaime held her stomach together all the way to the Quiet Isle, cursing her the whole while for the stupid brave bitch that she was. He held her until the moment they took her away.

Maiden women stay separately here, they told Jaime, the ones who were allowed to speak. And as you are not wed... When he asked who planned on keeping him away, the answer turned out to be most everyone. Never mind that he carried her there, nevermind that it was his fault.

It grew colder while Brienne lay abed. Winter sealed them like field mice inside little thatched huts that grew hot with boredom. Jaime had nothing to do but pace and argue and try to pry information from the perpetually tear-stained Podrick Payne. 

After a week he had had quite had enough. 

The Elder Brother is saying something, but Jaime is remembering the sound that the knife made against Brienne’s skin, and he has to sit down again.

“Ser—”

“I won’t go,” says Jaime. “Spare me your talk of the Seven. The Warrior has been my god since boyhood, and here she lies. Leave me; I have prayers to say.”

The Elder Brother is silent. Then he smiles. “I think,” he says, handing Jaime a damp rag, “that the two of you will have much to talk about when she wakes.”

No one questions Jaime after that. It is days before Brienne wakes, days long spent dozing in the wooden chair at her bedside and watching, agitated, as the healers change her blankets and force lukewarm broth down her throat. When they are alone, Jaime talks at her, finding as he had with Ilyn Payne that mutes are easy company. He wants badly for her to open her eyes and tell him with a frown that some part of his tale sounds more than a bit embellished; he pictures versions of this scene so many times that when she does wake, he thinks briefly that he has fallen lapsed into his imagination.

A hand fumbles at his stump. “Jaime?”

This part — it doesn’t go how he planned it would. He is supposed to sit up and grin at her and make some ready jape that will make her disgusted with him. Instead, the room blurs. He blinks it clear and places his hand on hers.

Brienne cannot quite sit up. Jaime eases her back. “Steady now.”

She blinks at him with those bright eyes — must she look so surprised? 

“Jaime. I dreamed that you left.”

“This is no dream, my lady. Can you not feel the pain?”

“I can.” She pales. “Podrick and Ser Hyle —”

“Safe as can be,” Jaime interrupts. “They are here, they are well-fed, and none the worse for all that happened. The boy has been aching to see you but the Brothers won’t allow it.”

Brienne is visibly relieved at this. She pulls her hand away from Jaime’s and passes it over her face, pausing at the thick bandages over her cheek. The wound is horrid, torn muscle and tissue visible like some grisly maester’s drawing, like something tried to tear her apart. 

“Whatever end he met, it was not slow enough,” Jaime says. Idiot. What sort of things do you talk about at a sickbed? 

“He died,” Brienne says, absently. She is not looking at Jaime but at the room, with its dark, rough-hewn timbers and warped windows. By the fireplace, there is a chairless table, on top of which sits a jug of water and Jaime’s false hand. He sees Brienne notice it and rises to strap it back on. She watches him fumble. “Will you fetch the Elder Brother for me, ser? I should thank him, and ask how soon it is that we can be on our way.”

“On your way to where?” Jaime snorts. _Ser_. “Winter came while you slumbered, wench. Snow in the Riverlands. Snow in the Stormlands, the Crownlands, in Dorne, for all I know. The roads are nigh impassible on foot, and as your stomach has just been rent open, I doubt if you will be doing any riding soon. You are going nowhere.”

“I promised to find Sansa,” Brienne insists. Her cheeks are flushing now. Good, better than that corpse gray. “I swore, and you did too, Jaime.” 

“Swore to a dead woman who will gut us both like trout should we ever meet again. I sent you away — that was my mistake. You have done quite enough.”

Brienne struggles beneath her pile of furs. Her left arm is still broken, set in a sling, and she cannot properly push herself up with the other. Jaime sighs, pours her some water. She looks pointedly away, and he grits his teeth. Kneeling beside her, “I will say this once, wench, so listen well. Whatever you think you owe anyone in this world: forget about it. You have paid off enough debts for a lifetime. I will not send you traipsing around the Seven Kingdoms in winter so that you can die the good death you think you deserve. I’ll not do it, Brienne. You have already as good as died for the girl. Catelyn Stark would not have asked more than that.” 

Brienne is silent, bruised fingers playing at the neck of her shirt. She will not meet his eyes. 

Her brow furrows. “I died for _you_ , Jaime.”

He blinks hard and reaches out to turn her face to his. Her uninjured cheek is hot beneath his fingertips. He smiles, a memorial to all the sentences that die on his lips. “That,” he manages, “was the wrong thing to say.”

He leaves then, stomach roiling as though he is going to be sick; he is not ill, but angry and tense and something else. Gods free him from this ugly, witless child. Try a little harder this time. The snow is well-packed out in the yard, but powdery drifts up to Jaime’s knees line the neatly swept pathways. He can hear a horse kicking its stall over in the stables, maybe Sandor Clegane’s feral beast. Across the yard, a group of older men string up cuts of venison for smoking; the acrid tang of someone tanning the hide pinches Jaime’s nose. He has nowhere to go, really, has not been much needed or wanted on the Isle. 

Except by one.

“Ser!” 

Podrick Payne is carrying a stack of firewood far too big for his scrawny frame. He nearly drops it in his haste to catch up. The boy has attached himself to Jaime in the days since Brienne’s injuries, though he can hardly speak without biting off his own tongue. Jaime was happy enough to hear the tale of how Podrick followed Brienne in hopes of reuniting with Tyrion, even if memories of his brother are sour now.

“Ser J-Jaime,” Podrick puffs, trotting to keep up. He cannot walk at Jaime’s side on the narrow path, so he follows slightly behind. “My lady — is she — has she awakened?”

“She has.” Jaime doesn’t slow. He has a mind to head down to the shore, see if the tide pools are frozen over. 

“Would you—ser, would you t-take a message from me? Could you tell m’lady —”

“Do I look like a bloody raven to you?” The boy’s crunching footsteps falter. Jaime sighs, pausing. “Fetch the Elder Brother, Pod. Your lady is awake and asking questions. Stupid questions. Perhaps he can talk some sense into her.”

* * *

He has never seen snow on a beach. It melts where the sea meets the shore, the strip of black sand inching steadily into the white as the tide comes in. The tide pools are frozen. Jaime crouches on slippery rocks to peer into them, half-smiling at the seagrass and snails stopped in their tracks below the ice, looking as though any moment they may begin to move again. The sea reminds him of home, the best parts of home. Racing horses on the sand, scaling the cliffs on the Rock, learning to swim with Cersei and coming home with salt-stiff hair. Tommen will make him Warden of the West if he asks. Tywin Lannister would make to rise from his grave in pure ecstasy if he knew the thought had crossed Jaime’s mind. His cousin Daven Lannister is Lord of Casterly Rock now; would Jaime truly do the job better? Daven will be married soon to one of the plump Walda Freys at Riverrun, an event Jaime is supposed to attend before he makes his way back to King’s Landing. Perhaps he won’t be expected to make an appearance if his family presumes him dead.

“I want to go home,” he informs a frozen urchin. Home has always been Cersei. What a thought that is. 

More footsteps behind him. Heavy ones. Jaime turns, half-expecting Brienne, and is immediately wary at the sigh of the Hound.

“Sandor.”

“Lannister."

“Heard the Elder Brother talking. Your ugly bitch is awake.”

Jaime narrows his eyes. “Care to rephrase?”

Clegane barks a laugh. “No.”

“I’m told you are dead, but your cur mouth seems to be working just fine.” A thought occurs to Jaime. “Are you not supposed to be silent?”

“Supposed to,” Clegane agrees. Several teeth have fled his mouth, and he is leaning on a gnarled cane that would have made a fine club for a smaller man. Someone has given the Hound a good thrashing. “I’ve been thinking, Lannister —”

“My, you _have_ changed.”

“I can still cave in your pretty face,” Clegane sneers. As if. Jaime’s maimed arm twinges. “I’m thinking I could be of some use to the lady. Last she was here, she wouldn’t shut her mouth about a highborn maid of three-and-ten with auburn hair. The little Stark bird, Sansa.”

Wolf. “I sent her to find the Stark girl and get her to safety, yes.”

“Safety, yeah.” Clegane snorts. “Where the fuck’s that? Back in your Lannister claws?”

Jaime shrugs. “Truth be told, Brienne finding the girl was to be on my behalf, but I doubted if the two of them would ever return to me. I needed her out of King’s Landing, anyway. Tumultuous times, as I am sure you know." This isn't quite true, but gods be damned if he is going to speak of oaths and honor to Sandor Clegane. "I never wanted Sansa back under Cersei’s shade.”

A gust of wind flings snow like flour into the air, sticking to beards and eyelashes. Frigid seawater spits on Jaime’s cloak. “What is it you want, Clegane? And remember, your gods are watching. Awed at your eloquence, I am sure.”

The Hound spits. “I’m leaving for the Vale to get the girl. The squire and that buggering hedge knight can come if they wish it. Long as they don’t slow me down. You take your lady knight back to King’s Landing, or the Rock if you think it’s safer. Fuck if I care. Send her after us once she can stand on her two feet.”

Jaime blinks at him. “You want to find Sansa Stark?”

“Are you fucking deaf?”

“I’ve lost a hand, not a brain.” Jaime rolls his eyes. He brushes past, heading for the path, but Clegane raps the cane across his legs. Jaime whirls, indignant. 

Clegane glowers.

“I tried getting her out of King’s Landing myself during the Blackwater. Any flea-brained fool could see that you lions were going to eat her alive. She refused me. Now look.”

“Why would she go with you? Pretty thing like that, could she even look you in the eye? You would have ransomed her—”

“To her mother. And she would’ve been better off for it, if your lot hadn’t slit the bitch’s throat.”

“I had no hand in that,” Jaime mutters. Only got the one. Catelyn Stark’s revenant croaks in his ear. 

“Made it all the way to the Twins with the other one. Had to drag her screaming from her uncle’s bloody wedding, elsewise they would have put her head beside her fool brother’s.”

The other one? “Arya? Arya Stark was with you?” What a day Tywin Lannister’s corpse is having.

“Till she left me to rot near Saltpans. Nasty little bitch. Seven know where she’s got to.”

“The tiny one left you to die?” Jaime laughs. He remembers Arya Stark only a little from his time at Winterfell and their journey south. Always scampering underfoot and shouting after that beast of hers, much to Cersei’s disgust. Of course that one had been Ned Stark’s favorite. If she is alive, perhaps so is Sansa.

“I was taking her to the Vale, ransom her to her aunt. Now the aunt is dead, you hear? Pushed from the Moon Door, and what rat bastard left in charge? Petyr Baelish, who married her after arriving with his natural daughter.”

And Jaime understands. “Natural daughter,” he repeats, suddenly hopeful. “Rather unlike Petyr to be so careless. And he always did have a soft spot for Catelyn…”

Clegane grunts and takes a half step towards Jaime. “If the little bird is in the Vale, nothing good is waiting for her. Not with that one.”

Jaime is inclined to agree. He has never much liked Baelish, but the man is savvy as they come, always hatching some scheme that you couldn’t hope to unravel even if you found out about it. And the Vale is none too stable at present, just the sort of chaos a man like that craves. A natural daughter. Does he want her to take up her aunt’s claim? No, there’s still Jon Arryn’s sniveling boy...unless he too takes a tumble out the Moon Door. A Stark in charge of the Vale, with Littlefinger pulling strings.

He gives Clegane a hard look. “If this is true, if you find the girl and I hear that you’ve laid a finger on her…” 

“You’ll send the big bitch after me.” Clegane nearly smiles. 

“And there will be nowhere in the Seven hells that she will not find you,” says Jaime. He puts out his hand, and after a moment Clegane gives it a rough shake. “If you find her, get a raven to me at King’s Landing as soon as you can. Gods know what we’ll do with her, but that is a problem for another time.”

When Clegane leaves, Jaime ignores the cold and wet and sits in the snow, thinking. Brienne, he reflects, watching the incorrigible sea, is going to kill him.


	2. Chapter 2

The Elder Brother gives Brienne milk of the poppy each night to ease her into a dark and painless sleep, and it is all too simple for him to slip her just a tad more, enough that Jaime and the Hound can lift her into the back of the wooden cart that the Brothers have provided for the journey. There is a sort of triangular frame protruding above it that Podrick helps cover with a pair of bear pelts turned the wrong way out. Brienne looks comfortable enough beneath it, swathed in her ever-present mountain of furs, though Jaime knows the peaceful image will shatter instantly when she wakes. 

It is the easiest way, that much is true. Ser Hyle is the one who suggests it, though only the Gods know how he heard tell of Jaime’s dilemma. She will never agree to return to King’s Landing on her own, Hunt points out, not after what they - and here his eyes cut to Jaime — did to her lady. She will kill herself trying to follow Clegane’s party, or she will demand to stay on the Quiet Isle until she is recovered. If you want her, Kingslayer, you’ll have to take her.

How selfish that makes him sound. He is saving the idiot wench from herself! Jaime cares not for the likes of Hyle Hunt, but the feeling of wrongness sticks to him like mud all throughout his preparations to leave. Podrick Payne’s brimming cow eyes don’t help. Such an expression would earn him a smack in any self-respecting Lannister household, but Jaime only turns his back on the boy.

Guilt gurgles in his stomach as he guides their sturdy cart-horse along the Red Fork on the way to the Crossroads. If you want her, Kingslayer... He is not being selfish. Jaime glares at the space between the horse’s ears, seething at Hunt, at himself, at Brienne. He is too long away from his duty in King’s Landing, but he cannot leave the wench to suffer alone, not after everything. 

I died for _you,_ Jaime, Brienne had said, as though the very thought isn’t enough to make him long to lock her in a tower and melt down the key. Enough playing at heroes for a lifetime. 

There is no small part of him that admires her. Jaime can admit that while she sleeps. Why in all the seven hells anyone with sense would dream of knighthood, he can no longer fathom, but with Brienne, it is easier to recall that ineffable quality that he once saw in Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Barristan Selmy, that unnamable thing that makes men raise their chins and straighten their backs. Jaime thought he had forgotten that. 

Did Arthur Dayne ever smuggle a woman back into the clutches of her enemies? Jaime snorts to himself. He had been half in love with the man, once; what Dayne would say if he could see Jaime now.

The cart-horse tramps steadily through the snow, which on this little-used road looks smooth but covers treacherous drifts and holes in the earth that make the cart shudder beneath Jaime’s feet. He looks over his shoulder at Brienne often, worried that the shaking will open her wounds, but the wench sleeps on unbothered. He is ready for the shouting, the fury when she wakes, and so is startled when one of these backward glances finds him looking into her wide-open eyes. 

“Seven hells,” he yelps, startling her and the horse both. Jaime reins the beast to a stop. “How long have you been gazing at me, wench?” 

“The sun is setting,” Brienne doesn’t answer. “We should stop for the night before it is too dark to camp.”

Jaime squints at her, that blue stare not so much unreadable as blank, pained. She is so much older in the eyes since they last met. Satisfied for the moment that she is not going to stab him in the neck, he turns back to the horse and begins to guide the cart off the road. There is a clearing only a few minutes into the wood, a lake of white that dazzles Jaime’s eyes in the setting sun. Clever of the Elder Brother to send dry wood and greasy balls of kindling with them, for the scaly pines that ring the clearing are wet and bent with snow, arching inward like the fingers of some great beast ready to snatch up a Kingslayer and a stitched-together wench. 

Brienne is silent while Jaime gets the fire going, a task made slow by the clumsiness of his false hand. She is silent when he hands her a share of smoked venison and silent when he slides Oathkeeper and her armor out of their bundles to show her that he has not deprived her of them. 

“Well,” he says finally, unable to bear the waiting anymore. “I suppose you wish you had left me to the Brotherhood now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Brienne. She is sitting, covered in blankets, on the edge of the cart, staring down at the fire. It is dark now, but Jaime can see the lurid pink scar on her cheek. In the flickering firelight, the tender skin strikes him as oddly beautiful, and he looks away, startled. “I know you would not hurt me,” Brienne continues, and neither of them looks at the other, “but tell me what is going on, and tell it true."

Jaime cannot deny her; he spills it all, the Elder Brother and the milk of the poppy, King’s Landing, Sandor Clegane, Podrick and Hyle Hunt, Littlefinger’s natural daughter in the Vale. Brienne is quiet, but a furrow molds itself into her brow as he speaks. 

“King’s Landing is far safer now than it was when you were there last, if the Elder Brother’s ravens tell it true. Mace Tyrell is regent now that my uncle is dead and Cersei’s claws are pulled. Gods know what sort of welcome I shall receive after shirking my duty all this time, but I don’t see why you should be at any risk.” He gives himself a shake. “Whomever the Grand Maester is now will put you right, then you can be off to the Vale, if that is what you want, though by my estimation you would be better off returning to your Sapphire Isle. Whatever you wish, my lady.”

It sounds very neat when he puts it like this, though questions prick at the back of his mind. There are more unknowns than he likes to admit, holes in the pretty picture he has created for Brienne. Mostly, he asks _who?_ Who killed Pycelle and Kevan Lannister, who fought for Cersei at her trial, who is keeping the High Septon in line? 

He remembers something else. “In this snow, we are perhaps three days’ ride from Riverrun, where my dear cousin Daven Lannister will soon be wedded to a charming Frey girl who I feel quite certain is called Walda. I am expected to attend. You aren’t,” he adds hastily when battle sparks in Brienne’s eyes. “A castle full of murdering Freys and especially those scheming Lannisters — I would not subject you to that after…” No need to say it. “I have arranged for you to stay at Castle Lychester. It is only a few miles from Riverrun. I will come to collect you after the festivities and we will be on our way.” 

A log on the fire pops at the end of his sentence, sending embers sizzling into the snow.

“So I have truly failed all of you, then,” says Brienne. “Renly. Lady Catelyn. Sansa...you. Now I’m to be dragged back to King’s Landing like the most foolish runaway dog in the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Did I not tell you already that I’ve no interest in listening to such rubbish? I used my Lord Commander’s voice on you, wench.” 

“ _Brienne_.” 

Jaime snorts. “You will be called much worse in King’s Landing, though not to your face, I’ll grant.” There, he has tried to warn her.

Brienne seems not at all concerned by this. Her eyes look at something far away, and Jaime guesses that it is not gossipy women she is trying to see. 

“You should have asked me,” she says at length. “You had no right. No right to drag me away while my duty is unfinished.” And if it were? At last, there is some heat to her voice, but it fades when Jaime meets her eyes. 

“You would never have allowed it. I almost didn’t myself. Sandor Clegane, of all people.” He knocks his head gently against the pine at his back. “You may be the first to have my head if he harms the girl, but I have an odd feeling that the man actually means well.” Jaime shrugs. “I suppose we shall see if men truly can change.”

“We have both deceived each other now.”

“How unbecoming of us.” 

Jaime smiles at the way she doesn’t laugh. It is almost endearing how much she expects of them: an ugly child and a Kingslayer. By the time Jaime was her age, he had long resolved to keep his head high and his expectations low. 

They sit and watch the fire until it burns itself away and the darkness swallows the horse and most of the pines. The inside of the cart is quite cramped, but their body heat warms it well enough once Jaime pins a flap of hide over the opening. Brienne keeps very still in the dark. Jaime waves a hand where he thinks her face is while he waits for his eyes to adjust.

“We should have done this while the fire still burned, wench, but your bandages will want changing.” He holds up the roll given to him by the Elder Brother. 

“They are fine.”

“They will fester, and the ground is too frozen to bury your corpse.”

“Tomorrow, in the light.”

“Ridiculous wench. I don’t want to spend the night smelling your reeking bandages.”

In the darkness, there is little to observe. Brienne huffs.

“Quickly, then.”

She eases off her fur cloak and lifts the woolen shirt underneath, exposing the bandages that bind her stomach. Jaime unwraps them as best he can with one hand, but Brienne has to help him pull the loose wrap around her back. The skin beneath is pale and freckled as he remembers, split horribly by that twisted rope of a wound, which not even the Elder Brother’s tidy stitches will convince to heal without a scar. Even now, Jaime can see that the flesh is only just holding together. Any abrupt movement on Brienne’s part could rip her open again. How he had screamed when he saw the flash of the dagger.

The thought surfaces: _don’t forget yourself_ , but he is already reaching out to touch the edges of the wound, running his fingertips over the puckering skin where it smooths out into the rest of her. Brienne hisses — at him or the pain, he isn’t sure — and catches his good hand with her own. Jaime waits for her to push him away, but she merely holds it there, his fingers to her wound.

“There will be a hideous scar,” he says to make her remove his hand, but she does not. 

“One of many.” 

“Only the living have scars.” Jaime shrugs. “Be grateful you can count yourself among them.”

“You have few enough,” says Brienne. 

Jaime blinks, a grin snatching at the corner of his mouth. “You were looking, then. At Harrenhal.” 

“There was hardly anywhere else to look.” Brienne huffs. Does she notice that his hand is flat on her bare waist? He did not intend to rest it there. Jaime thinks she must surely feel the race of his pulse against her; in this cold, his body comes alive at being so near to another. This feels like a game whose premise he hasn’t been told. It excites him.

“Indecent wench. You marked me yourself, though, or did you forget? Here.” He guides her hand to the thin scar above his eye, where her flashing blade had so nearly blinded him. “I think of that fight often, my lady. Had I known it would be my last, I would have put my back into it.”

Brienne scoffs and knocks the back of her hand against his cheek. She’s gentle about it, though, and perhaps in a different woman the gesture would have turned into a caress. Jaime finds himself wishing that he could see her better, though he is not quite sure what he hopes he would see.

“My blood was on fire that day,” whispers Brienne, and whatever game Jaime thought they were playing at is very suddenly no longer a game.

“As was mine,” he says, swallowing and reaching for the bandages, beginning to wrap them around her waist. This, he can do. “It is not often that a man finds his match.”

“A match? I won. I beat you.” She repeats this last as though she means to say something else. Her voice sounds as strange as Jaime’s does to his own ears, and he thinks the way he has to lean in to circle the bandages around her back has made her uncomfortable. It is all a bit indecent, he is not unaware of that, so he finishes the job quickly and sits back. 

“And may the Seven Kingdoms never hear of it,” says Jaime with finality. He hears himself as if from afar and hates the tang of boyishness that he catches in the words. He feels like a lad far too often these days, sneaking and running off and all this uncertainty. Where is Tywin Lannister when you need a good boyhood thrashing? Lucky thing that there is no shortage of Lannisters where they are heading.

Jaime lays back, settling in among the furs. Brienne is necessarily pressed against his side, warm and feeling far more solid than she looks these days. In the sprawling sky of not-quite-sleep, he sees a fight in the woods, Hyle Hunt’s dare, the way she pulled up her shirt, and the hotness of his heart warms him as well as any flame.

* * *

Those next days in the Riverlands pass almost pleasantly between them for a change. Brienne sleeps often, eased along by milk of the poppy for the pain. Jaime knows that the shaking cart on the ice-ragged roads pains her wounds, but the wench is reticent as ever, spending her waking hours pretending not to listen to Jaime’s talk as he drives the cart along. Yammering, she calls it. He points out Darry to the south, and relates the tale of Tyrion’s capture at the Crossroads Inn when they pass the now-cheerless little place at the junction of the River Road. The Lannister boys seem to have a habit of getting dragged around by the dourest women in Westeros, he says, and at this Brienne can plainly not decide whether to laugh or cry.

The two nights they spend much like the first, huddled for warmth before the fire until what wood they have burns away and forces them into the close darkness of their little cart. Jaime finds it more difficult to sleep beside Brienne now than he did that first night; her soft breathing and warmth against his hip keep him awake more than they soothe him, for he cannot seem to settle his mind properly when he is aware of them. Rather like trying to sleep with the sun in one’s eyes. Brienne appears to have no such trouble, and if she notices his weariness in the mornings she does not comment.

Knowing what unpleasantness lies ahead, Jaime can hardly complain. He even gets a laugh or two out of the wench, suggesting one night that with her broken left arm and his missing right, they ought to link at the elbows and create some sort of beastly swordsman-wench. Half of the same blade in each hand — the thought amuses Jaime immensely. She is not _good_ company, Brienne, but on the road like this she is easy company, and that he has sorely missed. He had little enough companionship on the Isle; even this great, solemn child makes a welcome respite after that. And if her balled fist against his shoulder keeps him awake at night, Jaime has put up with far worse from less enjoyable associations. 

The sight of the orange-and-white gyronny of House Lychester makes him wrinkle his nose in distaste, then, and not just because the keep itself is a bit decrepit. Small and squat, it resembles a gray stump left to rot in the snow. Sworn to the Lannisters or not, it is hardly a fitting place for a highborn maid, a fact that Jaime makes known to the weedy young maester who greets them. The raven he sent announced highborn company, did it not? Perhaps you thought it was another Ser Jaime Lannister who sent it.

“There are simply no men to keep up the place,” Maester Roone explains apologetically. They are moving slowly for Brienne’s sake — she is hobbling, to her outrage, with the help of a cane — elsewise Jaime would breeze through these halls as though he owned them. Little men like Roone, it is fun to make them keep up with you. 

“Lord Lychester lost all his sons in the Rebellion. He took six wounds himself fighting Ser Maynard. A proud knight he was, but his mind...well, it wanders now, ser.”

“Wanders? If you ask me, it stays in the same place.” 

Gods deliver him. Jaime stops with one foot still poised in the air. Brienne nearly stumbles into his back.

“All the done old man can do is repeat the same story, Ser Maynard this, six wounds that,” Genna Lannister continues, fanning herself even though the balcony on which she lounges is open to the winter air. “It is a wonder the ravens don’t repeat it. Hello, Jaime, sweetling.”

“Aunt,” he gets out, snapping a warning to Brienne with his eyes that he can only hope she notices. Genna gives him a look that says, you have explaining to do, Jaime Lannister, but her attention flits to Brienne just as fast.

“Lady Lannister.” Brienne straightens her spine and speaks with a clipped, courtly voice, so that if she weren’t scarred and holding up her weight on a cane you could easily picture her in a great hall somewhere. She is highborn, fool, she knows her graces. This is an intriguing transformation, thinks Jaime in amusement, one that she perhaps didn’t have the chance to make when he was helpfully tossing her into a cell in King’s Landing. He watches with interest as Brienne introduces herself to his aunt, brushing off Genna’s vocal concern at her wounds and making appropriate noises of congratulations on her nephew’s betrothal. The other nephew, she adds, giving Jaime a glance that has the unfortunate effect of drawing Genna’s attention back to him. 

“Daven will be ever so pleased to have his favorite cousin back for the wedding,” says Genna. She speaks to Brienne but pins Jaime with her eyes. “We thought he was dead, you see — or worse, eloped. The only word of him was that he disappeared with the Evenstar’s daughter in the Riverlands.”

Eloped. Jaime holds back a smile. That will prick the wench’s skin; he should have thought of it. 

“Loose ends, my lady aunt, rather unfortunate consequences of having only the one hand to work with. Lady Brienne has been more than helpful in tying them up.” 

The half-truth lands with all the grace of a wounded pheasant; Jaime can almost hear it _splat_ on the floor. Genna raises her eyebrows and offers her hand for Jaime to take. Heaving herself up, “Lannisters are meant to be better liars than that, darling nephew. Count yourself lucky that you can practice your tale on me before the wedding. Shall I expect you to join us?” At this last, she turns to Brienne, who tries valiantly to arrange her face.

“Unfortunately not, my lady. I took several wounds at — in the Riverlands, as you have noticed. Walking is not so easy for me at present.” He shall not quickly let her forget _that_ admission. “Ser Jaime has kindly arranged for me to stay here at Castle Lychester during the celebration. Then we are off to the capitol.”

“You are taking her to King’s Landing?” It is the only part of Brienne’s explanation that his aunt would not have already known from Jaime’s raven, the sly Crone. Genna frowns at him. Jaime cannot parse the precise meaning behind it, that frown, but something in her eyes makes him feel like a child failing to understand a simple sum.

“My duty resides there, as do talented maesters for my lady.” He gestures for the pinched Maester Roone. “Show Lady Brienne to her quarters, and give those wounds a look, if you can get past her teeth.” Brienne gives Genna a bow at the head and follows Roone. Jaime catches her by the sleeve. “I will be by to see you before I leave, my lady.” She looks warmed at this, but Jaime feels slightly abashed when he turns back to Genna. A perfectly courteous gesture protesting against his indecorous snatching of a lady’s sleeve. Only Genna Lannister can make him feel ashamed about his courtly manners. 

She crosses her arms over her bosom, looking even more square. “Oh, Jaime. That one?”

“Spare me, I’m aware that I have been ever so indecent. My sparkling reputation will likely come away clean, I think. No one in his sound mind will think anything unbecoming occurred between us. Look at her.”

“Oh, you _do_.” Genna chortles, tugging on his ear. “Again, I ask, that one? Your sweet sister will have a fit.”

“My sweet sister,” says Jaime, fearful and furious at once, “will hear not a word of any of this from you.” He isn’t sure of his meaning, or of hers, but the thought of Cersei learning about this whole business with Brienne strikes him cold for reasons he cannot quite understand.

“Tread carefully, Jaime,” says Genna, sounding almost sad. “Would that you had the typical Lannister vices.” 

Jaime leaves her, then, and thinks wryly that the wedding will not be half so maddening as Genna Lannister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> join me in my fight to secure rights for bi jaime and genna lannister. next chapter will feature daven lannister's wedding, which will not *only* be maddening, but also something else.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: graphic depictions of violence

Young Maester Roone finds Jaime after Brienne is settled and fills him in on the month’s news. Yes, he really has been gone that long. Jaime has heard much of it from the Elder Brother’s — he knows of Cersei’s trial, Tommen pardoning the little Rose Queen, Kevan Lannister’s mysterious death — but Roone also talks of all sorts of unsettling rumors. There is the beastly man who fought as Cersei’s champion, for one. The commoners in King’s Landing whisper that he is larger than the Hound and does not bleed. There is the wolfpack in the Riverlands, which harangued the Lannister tail all the way to Riverrun before vanishing. Worst of all, Roone whispers of a Targaryen heir — no, not that one, ser — a pretender who claims the name of Rhaegar's murdered son Aegon. The boy leads the Golden Company, the Stormlanders say, and he holds Griffin’s Roost in the name of the crown.

“What crown?” Jaime snorts. Aegon Targaryen is dead, sure as the sun rises each morning. Jaime has more cause to know that than anyone except perhaps the Mountain, who bashed in the babe’s skull while Jaime was slitting the throat of the king he vowed to protect. And the children, them as well, Price Lewyn reminds him. He tries to picture the little red shrouds at the foot of Robert’s accursed throne: did he see the boy’s face?

No one saw it, Jaime reminds himself, because it was broken beyond recognition. 

Still, he is sick of Targaryens and Lannisters, Starks and Freys. Between this mummer’s boy and Jaime’s return, Cersei will be receiving quite a lot of dark words from her slippery Maester of Whispers, if Qyburn still is that. 

Genna has left in his quarters a fine red doublet for the wedding, the color so deep it looks almost black against Jaime’s skin. The stitching is as fine as he has ever seen, lions picked out in golden thread glinting when he moves this way and that. Someone has produced a white cloak, too, though it is not nearly as splendid as his true Kingsguard garment. And where did you leave that, Kingslayer? 

The wedding will not take place until tomorrow, but Jaime is traveling the short distance to Riverrun tonight. He dons the doublet anyway, and wanders the halls of Castle Lyschester in an unsettled mood, looking for the room Maester Roone had pointed out as Brienne’s. It is a ghost’s hall, this place, gray and crumbling and wearing the faded banners of lords past like a serving wench’s tattered rags. The newly-hung Lannister banners are searing red by comparison. There is one not ten feet from Brienne’s door; how she must hate that. 

Jaime knocks his golden hand against the door, letting the metallic _clang_ announce his presence, and enters at Brienne’s muffled word of assent. She rises from beside the fireplace when he sweeps in, looking flustered.

“Ser Jaime...I thought you might be away by this hour.”

He sprawls theatrically on her untouched bed, slinging an arm across his face like one drunk. “I said I would come to see you, did I not? Save me, wench, my protector. I cannot bear another Lannister wedding.”

“They say that your — that His Grace’s marriage is a happy one.”

“Until my sister accused the little queen of whoring behind Tommen’s back,” Jaime agrees, ignoring her stumble. You'll have to watch your feet at court, Brienne. “Truth be told, I cannot think of the last Lannister match that ended happily. And weddings at present are such strained affairs.”

Brienne has returned to her seat by the fire, but now she draws herself up best she can. “You needn’t attend, ser, if you wish to avoid associating with —”

“Such foul creatures as my family, yes. Gods, Brienne, sing a different tune for once.” He sits up, annoyed by her uncanny ability to make a foul mood worse.

“I only meant that...that you aren’t like them.”

“Why is everyone telling me that today?” Jaime stands and brushes the creases from his doublet. It really is quite becoming. “Do you like it? You’ve never seen me look so fetching, my lady.”

“You think you look fetching?” Brienne bites back a smile, warming her cheeks and Jaime's chest. 

“I _know_ I do — don’t play at being arid.” You were _looking_ in those baths at Harrenhal. Jaime grins, watching her face. Those freckled cheeks grow redder; she would blend well will the decor at his cousin’s wedding. 

“It is handsome,” Brienne allows. She puts her face in order. “But vanity is not.”

“You could not grant me this one thing.” Jaime gives an affected sigh. “You will miss me while I’m away and you’ve nothing to gaze upon but these dreary walls.”

“The walls are blissfully silent.”

That makes Jaime chuckle all the way to Riverrun. He removes the doublet and cloak in favor of heavy fur and leathers before he rides out into the snowy night, packing them in the trunk brought up behind by a pair of servants. 

It feels queer, snow in the Riverlands. The fat white flakes render the world unnaturally silent, even as trees in the wood around him shriek in their too-tight skins. Every so often, he hears one of them explode with a deafening bang and a spray of shrapnel sharp as any blade. These trees are not made for winter, thinks Jaime, and neither are we. The skinny horse beneath him is on edge.

It is peaceful out there in the woods compared to Riverrun, however. The Lannister arms flapping in the wind would have once been a comforting sight, but the twin Frey towers beside it feel like a glare. Or maybe that is just the wench seething at the company he keeps all the way from Castle Lychester. Jaime cocks his chin up as they let him in the castle gate, as casual as if he were returning from a day’s hunt. The Tumblestone beneath the bridge is frozen in its tracks, and the snowdrifts pile ten feet high against the red castle walls.

Servants and squires scurry everywhere underfoot, carrying platters and dresses and great slabs of meat that surely would be better purposed cured and stowed away in Riverrun’s cellars. No one makes much fuss about the return of the Kingslayer — the boar wants salting and spicing! — but Jaime is pleased to see Piper and Peck waiting with Ser Addam Marbrand to greet him by the stables.

“Well met,” says Jaime, dismounting and clapping Marbrand on the shoulder. 

His old friend raises a reddish eyebrow. “Well, where is she? We half expected you to return with a bastard in tow, if you came back at all.”

Another bastard, you mean. “It has only been a month, but I am flattered that you think me so potent.” Piper and Peck hoist Jaime’s trunk between them and lead him through the winding halls of Riverrun to his quarters while Marbrand gives Jaime a quick, soldier’s summary of their host’s return to the castle. Most of the men have dispersed by now, back to the Rock and King’s Landing, though a small number remain here to help the Frey’s hold the castle, should there be any trouble.

“Don’t think there will be,” Marbrand finishes. “Riverrun falling cowed the lesser houses, and now the wolves are gone we’re getting along just fine.” 

No thanks to you. Marbrand won’t say so, but Jaime knows everyone is thinking it. All you can expect from the Kingslayer, really, shirking his duties. For a woman, this time. Jaime frowns. Did they truly believe he’d gotten Brienne with a child? She would geld me before allowing that, he thinks, smiling wryly where Marbrand can’t see.

He remembers himself as Piper leads them down a quieter corridor. “The Blackfish?”

“Nothing to be heard. He is a wily man, but old. I expect we’ll next hear of him living a quiet life in Essos.”

“Where my sister shall certainly send him a charming visitor.” Cersei has never been one for loose ends. Jaime follows his squires into his borrowed quarters, thankful that they aren’t the same ones where he stayed when he was last at Riverrun. Imagine that: there is the window where you watched the first snow of winter, there is the fireplace that you decorated with ashes of Cersei’s letter. Come at once, she had said. Sleep well.

In fact hefalls asleep easily, despite a chill at his back, and dreams of falling from a great tower, hearing a shout above and wolves below. His hand — one hand, he has time to curse — snatches uselessly at the wind. Somewhere you aren’t supposed to be, Kingslayer? He always is these days. 

The sunlight drips bright and syrupy through the window when his squires come to wake him. They bring a basin of water so that he can wash his hair, which is past his shoulders now and curling as it hasn’t since he was a boy. If not for the beard, he thinks, inspecting himself in the mirror, he would look more like Cersei than ever — no, no, they sheared off her hair. Jaime laughs aloud at the thought: his sister the bald one and him with this head full of gold. 

He dresses in the clothes Genna brought for him. When he buckles a sword around his waist he feels a touch of disappointment that Widow's Wail is collecting dust in the Red Keep until Tommen comes of age. Jaime and the wench would make a dashing sight, matching Valaryian steel blades swinging from their hips. His squires must think he is mad, the way he keeps laughing to himself.

There are many preparations still to be made, he is told, but he manages to remove himself from these, preferring to catch up with some of the men in his tail who have stayed behind for the wedding. He greets Pia, who can hardly see him over the tray of lamb in her hands, and nods hello to that singer he left here, Tom O’Something. The man smiles down his foxy face and plucks the wood harp in his lap. In the yard, Ilyn Payne raises his greatsword in what Jaime takes as both a greeting and a threat, given the beating it recalls. He has not trained with the sword in a month now; it is almost possible to convince himself that when he next wields a blade, it will feel as alive in his left hand as it ever did in his right. Maybe silent Ilyn Payne can hear men’s thoughts: he almost smiles as Jaime goes by. 

He finds himself in the godswood. It is clear and airy here, the afternoon sun winking at him from the frozen streams. The elms grow tall, but without any of the menace of the godswood Jaime remembers from Winterfell. Even the heart tree looks more sad than fearsome. They are made of different stuff in the North. Jaime crouches before the weirwood, trying to keep his knees out of the wet snow. Brienne would like this sort of solemn thing, though she doesn’t keep the Old Gods. Or perhaps it would just remind her of her Lady Catelyn and those lost she-wolves and make her cry.

Jaime touches his fingers to the sticky red sap. He looks at that sad, accusing face. “I tried,” he tells it. “What else would you have of me?”

The wretched old tree does not answer, but it watches him all the way out of the godswood. 

* * *

“ _Jaime_ ,” roars Daven Lannister, clapping him on the back with enough force to crumble a small keep. “Back from the dead! Or from whoring, if the rumors tell it true.” Someone has replaced the groom’s fox-fur cloak with one of Lannister red; the yellow of his hair negates any need for Lannister gold, but that has not stopped whoever procured his doublet. 

Jaime grins. “I was with no whore, coz. If I had been, I’d have brought her back for you as a wedding gift.” 

“Stuff her in silk and call her Walda and I doubt the old weasel would even notice.” He means thin-necked Walder Frey, who does rather resemble a weasel down at the end of the dais. Jaime had hardly been able to contain his laughter at watching a gang of sons hoist the hold man into his seat while Tom O’Sevenstreams — who had announced himself — solemnly sang _The Day They Hanged Black Robin_. How Walder Frey managed the trip from the Twins in this cold, Jaime cannot imagine.

Walda Frey — they tell Jaime that this one is second in line to inherit the Twins — is a plain and slender girl, not so busty as Daven’s usual playthings, but Jaime thinks she has an honest enough face for a Frey. Seated between Daven and Genna, she looks in danger of being snapped in two, and maybe that is the fate that awaits her in the marriage bed tonight. Jaime doubts that Daven will have any problems bedding the girl. A modest face is a small price to pay for the Twins. And to avoid pricking the skin of the old weasel. He remembers Red Ronnet Connington and _a sow in silk_. Men bed women they don’t desire for prizes far less sweet than Tarth every day; Connington was truly a gods-forsaken fool. He amuses himself for a time with imagining how the man’s red face would look with a squashed nose and a few absent teeth, the image made brighter by the Dornish flowing to his head.

Jaime has to piss eventually, and leaves shouting over his shoulder for them to delay the bedding until his return. The feast is riotous by then: men dancing on tables, dogs barking at the balconies, the floor sticky with ale and enough food to feed Flea Bottom for a fortnight. The music is gone —Tom O’Sevenstreams had removed himself some time ago — but the noise pounds between Jaime’s ears all the same.

The godswood is the shortest way to the Keep, but Jaime’s legs are wine-slow and he cannot quite bring himself to piss where that bloody weirwood can see, so he ducks behind the castle wall to relieve himself. The night air does some good for his head. A dog crunches through the snow behind him as he tucks himself back in; Jaime turns to whistle for it, but the sound dries in his throat, for the dog is not a dog but a wolf: white-gray and seemingly unconcerned at finding itself inside the castle walls.

There is only a dagger at Jaime’s belt — his sword hangs uselessly on a peg inside the Great Hall. He feels inclined to leave the beast be; its snow-speckled ears look almost delicate as they slant this way and that. He slips carefully back into the castle, and is making his way back to the feast when he hears the howls — and then the shouts and then the screams. 

The wolves followed the Lannister tail all the way to Riverrun, Maester Roone had said.

He breaks into a dead run. Clawed feet scrabble behind him as the wolf from outside races to join its brothers, who Jaime can now see pouring into the Great Hall in a writhing gray river. Packed so closely, they look almost like huge, slavering rats with murder in their eyes. Here and there among them, driving them on, are armored men brandishing flashing steel. Jaime catches sight of Tom O’Sevenstreams, singing at the top of his lungs and flicking throwing knives from his sleeves.

Heart thundering, Jaime shoves his way into the Great Hall, immediately retching at the reek of blood. The wine empties from his stomach, but his head still feels murky. He swats wolves out of the way with his golden hand and stabs at them with the dagger in his left, fighting to reach his sword where it hangs. The animals are as hungry for the food on the tables as they are for Lannisters and Freys, but even so they threaten to drag him to the floor.

Sword in hand, he slashes blindly at every mass of fur he can find, trying at the same time to get a handle on the room.

The wolfpack feasts. Daven Lannister has wolves hanging from his legs and one of his arms even as he cuts them down with great swings of an axe. His bride slumps at the dais behind him, a throwing knife embedded in her throat. Jaime spies Addam Marbrand and Peck fighting together behind a table that someone has turned on its side. A member of the Brotherhood Without Banners, for Jaime recognizes them now, leaps across tabletops to reach them, but Jaime knocks him from the air and drives his sword into the man’s chest before he has a chance to struggle.

A wolf closes its teeth on his golden hand as he stands. The creature’s eyes are too-bright and look directly into Jaime’s as they grapple. He cleaves in its skull, but even as he does so, another tears into his arm and he screams. 

The sound comes out choked, for even through the ripping pain, Jaime’s eyes catch on a figure at the head of the room and he knows exactly what he must do. 

Catelyn Stark, Lady Stoneheart, Jaime’s monster, stands unnaturally still beside a fiend that only the Starks or the seven hells could conjure. The direwolf could tear out Jaime’s throat without lifting its snarling silver head. This is Arya Stark’s creature, the one he was supposed to find and kill near Darry all that time ago. What did she call it?

Two pairs of eyes — one dead, grey, and accusing, the other yellow and very, very alive — fix on his. The direwolf’s teeth flash like daggers. Jaime raises his sword and charges. 

He sees the dead as he runs: Ryman and Amerei Frey, Pia with a serving knife clutched in her hand, his squires Peck and Piper with wolves tearing at their throats, Ser Ilyn Payne hacked down by three whooping men. A throwing knife lodges, burning, in his shoulder, but Jaime tears it out and keeps running. Addam Marbrand sees his charge and joins him, the two of them rushing a dead woman and the last child left to her.

The direwolf leaps to meet them. Jaime rolls to the left, slipping on bodies and gore as he spins back to his feet. A black wolf tears at his calf but he hardly feels it as he kicks the creature away and aims a slash at the direwolf’s side. It rounds on him, catching the blade between its teeth with an almost dainty _clink._ Jaime thinks it will tear the blade from his hand before Marbrand shoves a dagger into the beast’s side. It howls; one massive paw rakes across Jaime’s chest and slams him into the stone while the glinting teeth close on Marbrand’s shoulder, crunching. His friend screams loud and long; the sound seems to bring the direwolf a frenzied delight, shaking its head back and forth, splattering Jaime with blood and saliva. Marbrand goes limp and Jaime knows that he is next. He flings out his stump arm to ward off the teeth, choking on the pain even as he stabs his sword up and up, into the monster’s throat and out the other side. The direwolf collapses, smothering him with its pouring blood and thick fur, and he thinks he is going to die like this, drowning in wolf blood. The thought is so fitting that it makes him laugh madly even through the choking. 

It does not matter if he dies; he is not here, he is leaping off a cliff at Casterly Rock, he is fighting in the woods, he is warm and unable to sleep.

But someone is hauling the mass off of him, shouting at him to get up. 

“Brienne?” he asks, blinking at the hulking figure.

“No, fool, get up.” Genna pulls him to his feet. She is bleeding from a dozen different bites, wolves’ teeth imprinted in her flesh. Jaime's sword has clattered from his hand, but Genna shoves it at him, pointing.

Lady Stoneheart has not moved. She watches Jaime stagger towards her, a ghost of a smile on those dead lips, and when Jaime takes off her head with a single stroke he thinks, she died happily.

He turns in a daze, gone far away inside. Wolves are pulling blue snakes out of Daven Lannister’s belly. I am asleep in a too-small cart. I am riding and the wind is in my face.

Wolves snap at his legs, but he does not feel it.

I am fighting in the woods, I am changing her bandages.

An old man in a red and blue cloak raises Walder Frey’s head and shouts for the Kingslayer.

I have two hands. He looks down, laughing, but there is only one. 

“ _Jaime_ ,” screams Genna. She has been trying to get his attention, he thinks. There is a quarrel in her stomach that he did not notice before. Her hands are pushing, herding him towards a balcony and the frigid air beyond. “The Blackfish is coming for you, Jaime, you must go.”

He knew he recognized that old face. “The Blackfish? I should...I asked him to surrender, but…”

“Go, Jaime,” says Genna. She gives him a shove and then he is falling, falling.

The snow is soft beneath his head; it feels almost warm, like he is a boy again, a boy whose mother has just died, whose aunt is pulling a snug blanket over his head. I could stay here, thinks Jaime, listening to the shouting and the wolves up above and feeling the blood freezing to his face. I could stay here and the snow will cover me and I shan’t be found until the summer.

He wishes it had been Brienne who pulled the wolf off of him. The two of them, they could have drawn swords together and felled half an army of outlaws before they fell. Or maybe just the wench, maybe he would have been better off just watching, stump arm dangling uselessly at his side. Would she do that, Brienne? Would she fight for _such foul creatures as these_ if he asked? 

He thinks of that day in the Riverlands, of the Stark men she killed and those ragged tavern wenches dangling: they lay with lions. Who cares about a gaggle of common whores? The Brotherhood said that about Brienne, he remembers. Kingslayer’s Whore, Kingslayer’s Whore. Why, if I had a silver for every time she bleated for you to come save her...

You stole her from the Quiet Isle, dragged her here to her enemies. Does the Brotherhood know that Castle Lychester is sworn to the Lannisters? Do they know she is there?

And then he is on his feet, stumbling, falling over and over, heading in a direction he only knows by instinct. It is three miles to Castle Lychester. Three miles bleeding and in snow up to his knees, but he is running, running as fast as his wolf-torn legs will allow. If they have touched her, if they have killed her...winter will flinch before his fire. The Targaryen words have always struck him as a touch morbid, but he understands them better now. Fire and blood, he thinks, remembering the sound of the dagger across her stomach. Fire and blood, burn them all, burn them all. 

How long it takes him to stagger through those woods, he will never remember. He will only remember the fire in his chest and the blood freezing the sword to his hand and the wolves howling ceaselessly behind him. 

The small keep appears, finally, finally, before him, and if blood has been spilled within its walls he cannot tell from the outside. He sees footprints in the snow, tracking the same direction he is going, and nearly sinks to his knees in anguish. 

The moonlight glints off a pale figure lumbering through the snow, moving so slowly that he cannot tell for a time if it is coming towards him or away. It is approaching, taking great shambling steps and waving one arm. Someone is calling his name, high-pitched like a child.

Even limping, doubled-over, he knows that gait. He followed it for months.

“Jaime,” cries Brienne, nearly falling before him. She grabs his doublet so hard he thinks it may tear, but he does not tell her to let go, for her grip is the only thing keeping him on his feet. “Jaime, Jaime.”

“Brienne.” He sags and she has to catch him. “You’re alive. Thought…”

“We had a runner,” she says, eyes wide and flashing tears as she takes in the blood on him. “A squire, he said...he said everyone was butchered.”

“Wolves,” Jaime agrees. The world is slanting. “Brienne. I dreamed you were there. I was choking, but I thought of you — I remembered.”

“Jaime,” she whispers again, as though nothing else comes to mind. She wraps her good arm tight around him. He trembles at the touch, thinking if this is to be the last thing he allows himself to feel, that would not be so terrible. “I was coming for you,” says Brienne softly, her hand still gripping him with an urgency that her tone doesn’t convey. “I was going to Riverrun to find the ones who did this to you.”

“My protector.” A smile tears at his lips. “Don't leave me. Can you hear the music, sweetling? It’s started again, just for us.” 

When he falls, the snow feels cold again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any other red wedding 2.0 truthers out there?


	4. Chapter 4

Dead things torment his sleep; he called them his family, once. 

His father’s curled, rotting lips look almost as if they have something to say, as if at any moment Tywin will sit up, furrow his brow, and utter some condemnation that will cut Jaime to the bone. But that was life and this is death, and Tywin Lannister’s skin is sloughing off his face. Even so, Jaime bends to listen. Yes, father? Yes, I freed him, my baby brother, your monster. But the ends of his hair brush instead against Joffrey’s purple, moldering cheeks. Someone has slit the boy’s throat from chin to clavicle, and from it black blood gurgles like boiling mud, spewing onto Jaime’s feet, splattering his white cloak. He screams, and now it’s in his mouth; he is going to choke again, he is going to die drunk on his son’s shadowy blood. Hands — two, this is a dream, only a dream — try to close the wound, try to stem that awful flow, but find only thick and writhing fur. Teeth scrape on his arm. Genna is there to swat them away, even bent double as she is around the quarrel that pierces her abdomen. The blood sucks at his knees, coming now from Kevin Lannister’s stab wounds — too many to count, that’s what the raven said. There is a boy beside the bier. Tommen? The king stares at him with big green eyes. Wake up, Ser Jaime. Wake up.

“The king,” he blurts, before his eyes are all the way open. Sitting up too fast, snatching at bedsheets. “Tommen, who is with Tommen?”

“His Grace is in King’s Landing.” This from Brienne, who sits startled at his bedside. She looks tired and stiff beneath her alarm. Jaime knows that bearing well: he wore it himself when he sat vigil for her. Her lower back will have a crick in it, or maybe he is just aging. 

He sits back, feeling the pain now in his legs and his shoulder. “A dream,” he rasps, uneasy. His body hurts more now than it did when they carried him to this bed, and sleep has not brought his family back from the seven hells.

As if reading his thoughts, Brienne says, “The Brotherhood have sent out ravens — to Raventree and to us, we are certain, and we assume across the Riverlands. One may be in King’s Landing by tomorrow. They have proclaimed their victory and the deaths of Genna and Daven Lannister. Walder Frey and some of his sons, too. The Blackfish holds Riverrun in the name of King Robb and the Tullys, now...the rightful lord of Riverrun. He’s asked those enemies of the Lannisters and Freys to help him hold the castle.” She pauses. “They claim your death as well.”

“Lucky for them, I made it back here, lest a half-broken swordswench come pounding down their doors.” Jaime makes himself smile. Looking at her still sends a frisson of worry through his bones. To think of her big ugly body hanging, bloated... They lay with lions. He swallows back bile.

Brienne does not seem to notice. “Maester Roone and I have not sent out the news of your survival. I wanted to, but he believed our return to King’s Landing would be easiest if you were presumed dead. Mayhaps he is right, but I thought...I wondered if the king and his sister might wish to know sooner that you are alive.”

“Sweet wench. You needn’t worry about that — my children will weep only for an uncle they barely knew, if they weep at all.” He wonders if Cersei will clothe herself in all black, tear her gown like Robb Starks’ widow so that all may see the scars of her grief. Probably not, he thinks, she likes her gowns. Though if she’s kept drinking the way she has, the fabric will like as not tear itself. His darling sister, splitting at the seams.

Brienne’s face fumbles a bit at this: she hasn’t figured out how to arrange herself when he mentions his children. She is softer than he once thought. Shyer. He thinks she was holding his hand when he woke, but cannot recall. 

“Maester Roone says your wounds aren’t serious, but you have lost a lot of blood. The wolves were at your legs, and here on your arm. He said if you’d still had a hand, it would have been hopelessly mangled.”

Jaime has to laugh at that, even though laughing hurts and feels like a crime, after everything. The Stranger himself has it out for me. He holds up his stump, bandages concealing the teeth marks underneath. “I fought a direwolf.”

“I know. You told us everything last night while the maester stitched your wounds, do you not remember? Even Lord Lychester seemed to listen. You were blue all over and shuddering, covered in frozen blood. Your eyes were so far away…I wouldn’t have thought you knew where you were, except that you kept begging me to stay. So I did.” Brienne looks down, flaxen hair pale against the flush behind. “Maester Roone named it improper.”

Jaime does not remember. He can only recall her embrace and the cold snow that followed. When his eyes opened, he never thought to find it strange that Brienne would sit here beside him. “Bugger Maester Roone,” he says, instead of, thank you. 

“I should leave, now you are awake. I will tell the servants to look in on you.” Brienne rises; something he’s said has spooked her, or maybe it is just the look on his face. She pauses by the door. “I am sorry for your losses, Jaime. Truly, I am.”

He scowls, furious that she is leaving. “Don’t play with me, I know your heart is not so fickle. Say good riddance, go on. Good riddance to the wicked, murdering Lannisters. You would have done it yourself if you had half a chance.”

“I fight only enemies in armor,” says Brienne, and gods, she is not prepared for Cersei Lannister. “You are grieving, ser. I will leave you.”

The servants bring dry, salted food, and flutter like moths by his bedside until he snaps at them to leave him. He paces on bitten legs, his brain an unbroken colt galloping in hopeless rings, running miles that lead nowhere. Genna and Daven dead, his vow to the Tullys severed with Catelyn Stark’s smiling head, outlaws swarming on Riverrun, and beneath it all, back from the fetid depths: Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moonboy for all I know…

Why are you here? he screams at her, silent. Because she always is, in his darkest moments.

You lied to me, you lied. 

The voice — Lancel and Osmund and Moonboy — is here to remind him that he is alone, alone, and it is his fault. Tyrion, his father, Genna, his squires. Not even a foe left to him. Just a liar and a son who is really his nephew who is really the king. And a reassembled wench. I died for you, Jaime. That is worse than: I died because of you, Jaime; he feels sure of that, perverse as it is. The thought dirties him, trips him on his black-stained cloak. You must live to die for your king, they had always taught him.

I am no king worth dying for, Brienne. Others die at my feet and me, here I stand.

Did he really beg for Brienne to stay? Lannisters don’t beg; Jaime can almost hear his father saying it. Knowing it would enrage Tywin — he can almost stomach that.

He has forgotten himself, and the stars are out, glaring through his window. The glass is cheap, flexed. It seems a wonder that his breath mists against the window instead of making it curl in on itself, cringe and shatter before him. He admits it to himself as he stands there, aching: he wants Brienne to come back. Or: he wishes that she had never left. He cannot decide if these are the same. He only knows that you cannot be alone if someone is there to call you a fool.

* * *

They are two more days at Castle Lychester while Jaime’s wounds heal and Maester Roone creates a fresh sling for Brienne’s broken arm. Three more weeks before she can remove it, he says. 

When the two of them set out for King’s Landing at last, the roads are well-trodden with the feet of men and women heading to Riverrun seeking the Blackfish’s protection. They look bone-weary, these travelers, their faces wrapped against the cold, carrying rusted weapons and children and their belongings on their backs. Foot soldiers, most of them, Jaime guesses. Men discarded from this war or that, who returned home with nightmares and a limp instead of their promised pay. Brienne calls them broken men. Perhaps they think Riverrun will shelter their families for the winter if they lend the Blackfish their swords, as though it was not Brynden Tully who cast out the smallfolk in the first place. Jaime curses them for halfwits as they trudge by, these colorless hoards, though most don’t even raise their eyes. Even now, the Small Council will be fitting together the pieces of a plan to avenge the king’s slaughtered house. At Casterly Rock, there are still thousands of armed fighting men who will turn on their heels and take back Riverrun if ordered. Jaime may even be the one to lead them. The smallfolk must hate the Lannisters even more than he thought if they are willing to die by the sword for the Tullys. 

Brienne says they are brave, snaps at Jaime when he tries to ward them off. I am trying to save them, he responds, but the wench loves a lost cause. He forgets, sometimes, that he is harboring a Stark sympathizer. 

They speak nothing of his family; in fact, Brienne’s reserve and the constant, jaw-aching cold ensure that they talk little at all. Jaime pries a few tales from her, though, mostly about her girlhood on Tarth. 

“We swam,” she answers when he asks how they entertained themselves at that small keep. The afternoon sun has unhinged her jaw somewhat. “My brother taught me almost before I could walk. The sea is very salty there; you float almost without trying. All the children on Tarth play on the beaches." Anything else? "When I was older, I learned to sail. The fishermen will teach you if you ask and are willing to haul nets for your trouble. Their boats are so small and rickety you almost can’t believe they float. Sometimes I would scale the cliffs on the coast and dive into the sea.”

He recalls how neatly she dove into the Tumblestone. “I leaped from the cliffs, too, as a boy. My father would have me whipped when he found out, but I did it anyway.” Tywin never whipped Cersei for jumping. Her punishment came from a septa’s tongue, though Jaime knows it was no less harsh for that. “There were many better things for an heir to be doing at the Rock. Learning to read properly, for one. Always something dignified to do, like sit in on my father’s meetings or attend some lord’s ball.”

“There was a ball, once, on Tarth,” says Brienne, sounding almost dreamy. Jaime looks over his shoulder to check that the horse hasn’t kicked up a rock against her head, but she is still leaning against the cart’s front edge so that she can see the side of his face while they speak. “It was when Renly Baratheon came of age. The men there...well, I was a sight stuffed into a dress. A beast, you would say.” He opens his mouth to speak, but she does not notice. “Lord Renly danced with me in front of everyone. He was a good man, a kind one.”

Perhaps he thought you were a lad, Jaime almost says. Or: good and kind men don’t want to be the king; or: I remember your blue dress in King’s Landing. He doesn’t want to hear about Renly. 

“Didn’t you mention a brother, my lady? The boy should have danced with you, instead of letting Renly’s entourage laugh behind their hands.”

“Galladon died when he was just a child.”

She is the heir, you fool. 

“I suppose you don’t need my condolences all these years later.” Jaime shrugs. “But no highborn maid should ever want for a dancing partner. I’ll grant you a real dance when we get to the city, my lady.”

“Don’t jape.”

“Which part was funny?”

“No part.” She sniffs and settles beneath her blankets. “Watch the horse, Ser Jaime.”

He watches the horse all down the Kingsroad.

* * *

Winter does not suit King’s Landing. It is a city made for summer, whose glowering sun bakes the walls and the Keep bloodred, and stirs a simmering pot of sweat and shit, horses and dead mongrels, fish guts and brown, salty water, effecting a hot and rotten stench that climbs above the city and simmers there. You can smell it for miles. Now, King’s Landing looks gray and washed-out, its back bent under two, three feet of snow. The cold is helping with the smell. Around the walls, the smallfolk’s shanties look ready to collapse; so do the smallfolk themselves, really. Jaime tosses a coin to a few of them who grab at the cart, begging.

A pair of Gold Cloaks at the Dragon Gate shout for him to pull up. Brienne shifts into a kneeling position behind him.

“Oi!” shouts one of the men. “No further for you. Nobody in or out — king’s orders.”

Mace Tyrell’s orders, Jaime figures, though he’s certain Tommen took great pleasure in watching the wax squish beneath his seal. He tilts back his chin. “You would keep the queen’s brother on the wrong side of the walls?” 

The guards exchange a glance. Which queen?

“Jaime Lannister’s dead,” the second one ventures. So Cersei is not without her supporters. “Got his throat slit by fish at Riverrun.”

“Aye, and his cock cut off, they say. Shoved it down his throat, the Blackfish did.”

Jaime looks back at Brienne. “Remind me to update the White Book, my lady.” He turns to the men, rips at the straps on his golden hand with his teeth, and lobs it at their feet. It lands with a dull _clang_. The guards look at each other.

“Your left arm is getting stronger,” observes Brienne. Jaime laughs.

No escort arrives for the Kingslayer and — if you believe the rumors — his whore, but the news travels on fast feet, from the Dragon Gate to the Old Gate, into the slushy gray streets and up Aegon’s High Hill, where it patters down cold hallways and bursts into the quarters of Cersei Lannister in time for her to meet her brother inside the Red Keep’s frosted bronze gates. 

The Gold Cloaks who fetched Jaime and Brienne from the stables draw back as she hurries towards him and flings her arms around his neck. 

“My brother,” she gasps. “They told me of your death, but I would not believe them. I knew, here.” She presses his hand to her heart. “I would know if you had died.” 

A cowl cannot hide the short, curling hair that does not quite pass her ears. Jaime gently extricates himself from her embrace. “Cersei,” he says flatly, realizing that he’s no plan for what to say to her. 

She sees something in his face, steps back. Her eyes slide over his shoulder. “Uncle Kevan said you went off with a woman.” 

Jaime looks around. Gods, not here, not where there are servants and Gold Cloaks and a towering knight of the Kingsguard at Cersei’s back. “I had unfinished business elsewhere, sweet sister. I know you of all people can appreciate that. Lady Brienne here saved my life, and at great cost to her person.”

Brienne comes forward, standing straight as she can manage. Even with a hunch, she towers over Cersei. “We did not speak when last I was here, my lady. My name is Brienne of Tarth. I brought your brother back from captivity at Riverrun. In return, he helped me with my trouble in the Riverlands.” 

Cersei’s eyes blaze at that: _my lady_. “The first time you brought him back, my brother was short one hand. What is he missing this time, Lady Brienne of Tarth?” 

“An aunt and a cousin,” says Jaime, “though that is no fault of my protector.”

“I didn’t know you still needed a minder, Jaime.” Cersei makes a smile look like a sneer. “Come, brother, we have much to discuss. I should like to hear about this unfinished business of yours.”

Jaime nods; this will have to be done. He looks around to send for whomever the new Grand Maester is, but after he sends the boy off, Brienne clears her throat. It is an awkward sound, like you kicked a horse too hard. 

“Ser Jaime,” she says, determinedly not looking at Cersei, “might I have a word in private?”

Seven bloody hells, they may as well marry if they are going to subject themselves to this sort of indecency before eager eyes. Still, Jaime nods. “A moment,” he tells Cersei, who does not like to wait, not even a moment. He leads Brienne outside, into one of the Keep’s many inner yards. This one has a private corner: as good a place as any to hope no one is listening. 

“Wench,” says Jaime, crossing his arms, “she will make you pay for this.”

“I only wished to say goodbye,” says Brienne. She looks down. “Now that we are at court, I know…” She gathers herself. “You have duties to attend to, and I will be healing, then off to the Vale. I’ve no wish to cause any more difficulties for you than I have already. I am — I am not ignorant of the mistake you made in trusting me, Jaime, or of the fact that I lied to you. But we are here now, and you can do your duty properly. I will not get in the way.”

“Brienne,” says Jaime, after a moment, “what are you talking about?”

“Ser?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Jaime passes his hand over his face. If they were not here, with all these hidden eyes… what? What, Jaime? “I brought you here,” he says. “I brought you back so that you wouldn’t have to heal alone on that bloody island. I could have left and been back with my king a month ago. Why would I want to be rid of you now?”

Brienne blinks. “I… at Pennytree. I spoke of the Hound and —” She doesn’t say Sansa Stark’s name, not here. “It was a lie. You trusted me with your honor, and I abused that trust."

Is this why she didn’t fight him when he spirited her away? Does she think it is her punishment to go where he wills it?

Her head hangs; he can’t see her eyes. Jaime lifts her chin with his living hand. “Brienne,” he says, softly, so that only she and the falling snow can hear, “I knew it was a lie, and still I followed you. My feet would not move any other way.” It feels like too much to say that, but it is true and it has nested in his heart since Pennytree. He could not turn away. “Promises often go awry here in King’s Landing, but I promise: you will have my company if you wish it, Brienne. I did beg you to stay, after all.” 

He brushes the backs of his fingers across her chin, whirls on his heel, and leaves, trying not to feel too much like a man fleeing.

Cersei is pacing, waiting for him. Her Kingsguard is still huge and silent at her back; this must be Ser Robert Strong, the man who championed Cersei at her trial. Jaime cannot see his face beneath his helm, but the realm doesn’t make men of that size every day. Dead things walking; he cannot find it in himself to be surprised.

Jaime eyes the man as they walk to the Small Council room, Cersei pointedly going on about the rumors surrounding his disappearance. “...Tommen was absolutely inconsolable, what with your “death” coming so soon after his Great Uncle Kevan’s. And there was Daven and Aunt Genna, of course, but —”

“Sister,” Jaime interrupts, “perhaps you wouldn’t mind introducing me to my newest brother in white. I’ve noticed he seems rather close-mouthed.”

“What? Oh, yes, yes, this is Ser Robert Strong, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”

Jaime stops. Cersei smiles.

What have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing.” She looks so innocent, his sister, like a little girl again, her hair just beginning to grow out. But that smile. “His Grace Tommen needed a new Lord Commander when we heard of your death. As Ser Robert proved his valor and loyalty to the crown during my trial by combat, Tommen saw fit to reward him. And as Kingsguard serve for life...you have been removed from service, my dear brother.”

Jaime stares at her. He has come all this way. He dreamed of his king. Still, Cersei smiles. She leans in close. “Some of your host arrived here in King’s Landing. There was a curious rumor among them that Ser Jaime Lannister had received a raven from his sister at Riverrun. There was a rumor that he refused to read the letter, and instead threw it in the fire.” 

Jaime smiles back; really, it is just a baring of the teeth. A snarl, how fitting. “The rumors were wrong, my sweet sister.” He curls his lip. “I read it first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cersei @ jaime: you may take your knives and go


	5. Chapter 5

If you take what they say at face value, which in King’s Landing you never should do, everyone in the Keep is thrilled, simply overjoyed at Jaime’s return to the land of the living. Pages and horse boys and his old grooms trip over themselves to greet Lord Lannister as he storms from one end of the Keep to the other. My lord, you are looking well; why, Ser Jaime, is that truly you? Paxter Redwyne and Harys Swyft, neither of whom have any love for Jaime, crow like cocks at his reappearance; only the Seven know what politics they think they are playing. Jaime would have delighted in it once, would have smiled even wider, even more falsely, would have bowed deeply to those who expected it and brushed away his troubles like a speck of dust off his white cloak. That seems rather tiring, now. And he no longer has a white cloak. 

Mace Tyrell, whom Jaime corners as he leaves the Small Hall, is even fatter and gustier than Jaime remembers. He would make a fine horn player, all that air in his lungs. 

“The decision is irreversible, I’m afraid,” he sighs when Jaime demands back the white cloak that Ser Robert Strong so obediently removed from his shoulders. “His Grace Tommen believed you dead, and so released you from your service. You have done, ah, a fine job as Lord Commander, ser, but the guard is changing. You will have heard of the Targaryen pretender in the Stormlands? No threat to our young king, of course, Connington has few enough victories to his name, but it is the opinion of the Small Council that His Grace needs a Lord Commander who will be...shall we say, more reliable."

Someone who doesn’t get captured, someone who doesn’t run off getting bastards on the ugliest whore in the Riverlands. As they say. “Gregor Clegane will not be your dog,” says Jaime. Tyrell winces, glances down the corridor. “He is my sister’s creature, did you oversleep and miss the trial, my lord? They say he cleaved the Faith’s champion from shoulder to hip and brought Cersei his head. Doesn’t smell like roses, if you ask me.”

Mace Tyrell fills his sails. “Your sister’s claws have been pulled. She would be on her way back to Casterly Rock even now if there were a way to remove her from the city without the Sparrows tearing her limb from limb. You would do well to return and claim your birthright. Find a good woman and marry. You are the heir to the Rock now that you are released from service. Forget the white cloak, and His Grace,” here he means himself, “will make you Warden of the West. It is what your father always wanted.”

“And I try ever so hard to honor his memory.” Jaime flexes his remaining fingers. Mace is telling him to leave. Go home to the Rock and pace your cage until we need you at the head of that army. 

He treks to the White Tower to gather the few belongings he left there. Nobody is around, but then, there is almost nobody left to be around. Arys Oakheart dead, Ser Balon Swann away in Dorne, Kettleblack imprisoned and soon on his way to the Wall; Ser Boros and Ser Meryn will be with Tommen, gods protect him. What remains of Lord Commander Gregor Clegane haunts Cersei’s footsteps. Two real Kingsguard left — and _those_ two: a halfwit food-taster and a brute. 

Someone — it will not have been Cersei — has piled his spare clothing and a few small possessions on a table in the White Room. The pile looks small; it looks ready for someone to pack it away. Jaime tucks his things under his arm and turns to leave, pausing when his eyes land on the White Book. It had been his duty to update it, if only for a short time. He remembers that Ser Barristan Selmy recorded his own dismissal from the Kingsguard before vanishing. The clothes go back on the table.

Jaime’s last entry, easily recognizable in his childlike scrawl, reads:

_Defeated in the Whispering Wood by the Young Wolf Robb Stark during the War of the Five Kings. Held captive at Riverrun and ransomed for a promise unfulfilled. Captured again by the Brave Companions, and maimed at the word of Vargo Hoat their captain, losing his sword hand to the blade of Zollo the Fat. Returned safely to King’s Landing by Brienne, the Maid of Tarth._

He picks up the quill and adds: 

_Ended the Siege of Riverrun without bloodshed. Captured in the Riverlands by the Brotherhood Without Banners. Championed victoriously in a Trial of the Seven by Brienne, the Maid of Tarth. Fled the slaughter at the Second Red Wedding, and briefly believed dead. Dismissed from service in his 34th year by King Tommen I Baratheon._

And that was all anyone ever wrote of Ser Jaime Lannister. He supposes Lord Lannister is more fitting now, if the servants’ greetings can be believed, and they usually can. Hello, Lord Lannister. He tries pronouncing it but feels like he is talking to his father. 

A wispy runner patters up to him outside the White Tower with a summons — well, it is officially an invitation — to dine with King Tommen on the morrow. 

“Who else will be there?” Jaime asks the boy, who answers that the Queen and the king’s mother will be dining with them. Tell the same to Cersei and she would probably say, won’t Lady Margaery be there, too?

For her part, Queen Margaery does look lovely at dinner, if a touch drawn about the mouth. She gives Jaime her condolences where Tommen can’t hear, and if dining beside the woman who accused her of treason causes the Rose Queen any consternation, her pert little face shows none of it. There is something vulpine behind the eyes, though.

The whole affair must have been Tommen’s idea; nobody else would put Margery and Cersei at a table together and expect claws to stay sheathed, though the women mostly behave themselves by speaking only to Jaime or Tommen — never to each other.

“Uncle,” says Tommen while the servants clear the table for sweetmeats — _Father_ , thinks everyone else — “Mother says you’ll be going home to Casterly soon. Because Lord Tyrell is making you Warden of the West.”

“You’ll be doing that yourself, my love,” Margery reminds him gently. 

“Right. I thought I could come back with you. Just to visit.” Tommen pokes at the cream on top of his tart, avoiding his mother’s eyes. “I haven’t been back in so long, you know, and Ser Pounce and Boots and Lady Whiskers have never seen it.”

These are the cats who keep sniffing at the bandages around Jaime’s legs. Tommen picks one up and hands it to him. Jaime rubs it between the ears and says carefully, “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible, Your Grace. Travel is difficult at the moment with the snow and so many enemies about. We could not risk you.” Cersei makes to speak, but Jaime continues. “Anyway, I won’t be going back to the Rock just yet.”

“But these times are so troubled, my lord. You must claim your seat as soon as possible,” says Margery.

“I can claim it from here,” says Jaime. He nudges the cat off his lap; Lady Whiskers, he thinks. “I have lived in the Red Keep for longer than you have been alive, Your Grace, and I am not so keen to clear out just now, not when winter is upon us and I’ve only just returned from the Riverlands. Such a campaign is taxing on my aging bones, you see.”

“I’m sorry you’re not in the Kingsguard anymore.” Tommen hangs his head. “We really thought you were dead, Uncle, and Lord Tarly said… ”

Poor Tommen, with his big green eyes and chubby boys’ hands striped with lacerations from the Iron Throne. What would happen, Jaime wonders, if I leaned over to him, to my son, and whispered: You don’t have to do this, you know. There isn’t a drop of king’s blood in you. You are mine. 

Disaster, of course. Tommen’s head on a spike, Jaime and Cersei’s too. No claimants left except for Stannis, if the old broomstick ever reappears from his Northern folly, and the two Targaryens, be they true or pretenders. The realm in chaos once more. Still, Jaime considers it, if only for a moment. He could try to sway Tommen, convince him to renege his action, put Jaime back in a white cloak even if he is no longer the Lord Commander. This, too, he considers; will he plead with his son? No, this is not the place, nor the issue. 

He settles for: “Never mind, Tommen. Just remember one thing, will you? You can say no. You’re the king. You can do whatever you want.”

“Except play with your food,” says Cersei sweetly, though her eyes are on Jaime. Margaery smiles. Tommen reddens and puts down his fork. 

“Uncle Jaime,” he says, a small frown forming, “is it true that a lady knight came back with you from the Riverlands?”

“Lady Brienne is no knight, though she wields a sword better than most, I’ll grant. Yes, we crossed paths in the Riverlands, where she took many wounds on my behalf. I brought her here to receive the care of the Grand Maester.”

“Grand Maester Gorman is very skilled,” adds Margaery. “He almost replaced Pycelle once, you know. He’s a sweet man, and has a gentle touch.” And he’s your uncle, thinks Jaime. He studies the queen’s face for any sign that she harbors ill will towards Brienne over Renly’s death, but a weirwood’s eyes say more than Margaery’s. 

“She saved you, then? From the outlaws?” Tommen sits forward eagerly. 

“She did,” says Jaime. “She fought bravely, like a knight.” He wonders if Tommen will remember that those same outlaws murdered his family and start weeping again, as Margaery says he has been. It is hard to tell with one so young how much he truly understands.

“I should like to meet her,” Tommen decides. “I didn’t know ladies could be knights.”

“They cannot,” says Cersei. She has scarcely looked away from Jaime since he told Tommen of his decision to remain at King’s Landing for a time. Her slender fingers are so precise, the way they fold over themselves, so deliberately controlled that Jaime knows it is all she can do not to reach across the table and slap him. 

“I went to go see the Lady Brienne earlier,” she continues drawing a fingernail around the rim of her glass. She manages to make _the Lady_ sound like _the mangy cur_. “I felt she deserved a proper greeting, lady to lady, especially seeing as she is so close to you, brother. She was most surprised to see me, and I’ll admit she made for a startling spectacle in her own right. The Grand Maester was treating the wound on her cheek, simply a horrid sight. My heart breaks for a creature cursed to spend her life marked like that. Why, if a dog were injured in such a way…” Cersei sighs. “I let her know to come to me with any of her needs.”

Jaime makes himself smile; the other option will frighten the children. “I’m sure she was touched by your concern.”

“Could you tell her I’d like to meet her, Uncle Jaime?” asks Tommen. He misses the look Cersei throws Jaime’s way, a look that could strip rust off a sword. Margery does not; her eyes glitter.

“I’ll tell her,” says Jaime. He nods at Tommen.

Cersei says, “A servant can fetch her. Anyhow, a king has better things to do than —”

“I will tell her,” says Jaime. “Now, if someone could direct me to where Warden of the West sleeps… ”

* * *

Jaime’s new quarters, as it turns out, are not far from Brienne’s, seeing as they are now both highborn guests of the king. He finds his way to her door the next morning and raps on it with his living hand. The golden one is still tight against the bandages beneath.

There is a quill in Brienne’s hand when she opens the door. 

“Writing to your lover?” asks Jaime.

“To my father. He hasn’t heard from me since I was here last.” 

He tilts his head at the hallway. “Walk with me?”

Brienne regards him. “Let me fetch a cloak.”

Her gait has improved some, no longer that hunched-over shuffle. The Grand Maester has sewn a sort of sleeve into her tunic so that her broken arm is shielded from the cold. 

“Will your father find you well?”

“He will find me on the mend.” Brienne pauses as a handmaid drags a rug across the hall. “In truth, I fear he may be in more danger than I.”

“The Targaryen boy.” Jaime nods. “Don’t trouble yourself, my lady. Stannis will never allow the Golden Company to take Storm’s End. It may be that he is sailing south even now. And besides, Connington is a fop at heart. You should have seen how he used to moon after Rhaegar Targaryen. The Stormlands needn’t worry about that one.”

“Stannis may not even be alive. It is the talk of the servants that no ravens have come south in weeks. He may hold Winterfell or he may be dead.”

“I can guess which you would prefer.” Jaime smiles thinly. In truth, the conflict in the Stormlands has him on edge. He would have trusted Kevan Lannister over Mace Tyrell here; his uncle at least would have acted decisively, whatever action he took. Tyrell, he’ll bluster. “But never mind that. Your father the Evenstar has a reputation for a practical man. If it comes to it, I am certain he’ll bend the knee. The crown will forgive him that, once Aegon is defeated. So long as he makes the right noises.”

“What choice will he have, with his heir off playing the fool?” Brienne sighs. Jaime doesn’t respond right away; he leads them in silence through a frozen garden towards the training yard. Even on this gray morning, the clash of steel is audible at a distance. The better to escape curious ears. He watches as Brienne leans over the landing to see the men below. There is longing on her face; he recognizes it. She has been too long without a blade in her hands. 

“Did your father never remarry?” he asks.

Brienne brushes snow off the balustrade. “No. There were many women, but…” She shrugs. “Marriage was my task.”

Was. “Ronnet Connington had the misfortune of meeting me at Harrenhal. A great thundering fool, that one.”

She pales. “Did he —”

“He did. I relieved him of one or two teeth.” Jaime fights the urge to spit. “Truth be told, I rather wished I had a bear of my own, at that moment. Perhaps the Goat was on to something. _Thomething_ , he would say."

Brienne ducks her head; is that a smile? It is gone before he can be sure. “There are many worse men than Red Ronnet in The Seven Kingdoms...but I cannot say he did not deserve that. That was gallant of you, ser.” 

This must be a jape, but the smile does not reappear. Jaime snorts. He wants to ask why she won’t marry — surely not all men are as blind as Connington — but he has business. Or at least, he has told himself it is his business.

“The king wants to see you,” he says. Brienne’s head comes up. “Don't fret, he is simply intrigued by the lady knight who followed his Warden of the West home. Show him Oathkeeper, he will like that. He has its twin, you know. Oh, and be sure to compliment his cats. Fine specimens, really, especially that Ser Pounce. I will be there,” he adds when Brienne continues to look wary, “and my sister will not. I’ll make sure of it.”

Brienne’s face whitens. “She told you that she came to see me, then.”

“The two of us dined with the king and queen. The whole thing is quite heartbreaking, to hear her tell it. A woman scarred for life, what worse fate?”

Brienne turns away. Don’t do that, he thinks. She watches the swordsmen below, sorrow turning her mouth. “Wench,” he tries, studying her, “she only means to prick at you. It is what she does, has always done. Cersei...doesn’t get on with other women. She never has, in truth. She wishes she were born with a cock between her legs — mayhaps the two of you have that in common. Anyhow, I’m sure you have heard worse. From me, even.” He means to provoke her, but Brienne only swallows hard.

“Your sister is quite beautiful, my lord,” she says softly. 

Ah. Jaime takes a step closer. He understands this, can see clearly enough how a woman like Cersei can cut a woman like Brienne with only her eyes and a smile full of teeth. The snow gleams gray as a fevered forehead under the morning sun, nothing like the flames that lit up Brienne’s scarred cheek that night in the woods. The memory strikes him dumb; when did he become a man who lingered on scars?

“Come, now. You know my name,” he says, instead of remembering. “It is not _my lord._ ”

“And mine is not _wench_.”

“Brienne,” says Jaime, and she blinks as though she has never heard him speak her name, “I could call you wench, wife, queen of the Seven Kingdoms, it makes no matter.” She opens her mouth to speak — look at how those eyes flash! — but he continues. “Your face will never be sweet to look on, yet look on it I do. And look on it I will, when I make good on the dance I offered.” He smiles at her expression; she thought he had forgotten.

Something creeps onto Brienne's face, but she chases it away just as fast. Collecting herself, “Jaime…” 

“ _Oh, Jaime, don't jape. Jaime, that is cruel._ Spare me. You want to say yes, it is all over your face. I’m looking at you, see?” Seven hells, when was the last time he looked away? 

Brienne says, “Your sister will be angry. She would not — if she found out…” 

Oh, she would have our heads; yours or mine first, we should make a wager. “She won’t,” he says.

“She will, she always does.” Brienne sinks teeth into her lower lip. “Your aunt told me, Lady Genna. She came to me after you left for Riverrun. She warned me about this city, and your sister...and you. She told me to stay out of reach. Wherever your gaze wanders, she said, Cersei follows it.”

Why does Brienne look hopeful, then? Why does she look like she is asking him a question? Jaime could kill Genna for meddling, but, well. He gives Brienne his most arrogant sneer. “Why are you here, then?”

“I think it is as you said. I couldn’t — I could not stay away.”

And suddenly he wants to save her, wants to sever the noose she is stringing up for herself, but if he steps close enough to cut her down he will never step away. There is a rope around both our necks, he thinks, and tells Brienne, “Dance with me, then.”

He wills her to run, to do what she does and find a jape where there isn’t one. But she only hesitates a moment, nodding quickly, and when she turns to leave her ruined face is only inches from his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for making y'all wait a bit. school, such that it is now, has started back up, so i'm a bit busier these days. no worries, though, updates will continue!


	6. Chapter 6

“And this one,” says Tommen, lifting a black cat so fluffy that it nearly flops out of his arms, “is called Boots. Because of his white paws, see?”

“A fitting name,” says Brienne solemnly. She casts a furtive glance at Jaime, who, lounging in the windowsill of Tommen’s solar, can barely smother a laugh. Perhaps she had thought he’d been japing about the cats, or perhaps she cannot quite believe that this tottering, sweet-tempered child came from Jaime’s seed.

The lad seems rather taken with Brienne, though his eyes widened into saucers at her bulk when Jaime first led her through the door. He thanked her dutifully for saving Uncle Jaime, looking anywhere but her scarred cheek, then grabbed her by the hand and led her to his squirming mass of pets. Jaime, for his part, sits on the windowsill and does his best to annoy Boros Blunt by making eyes at him across the room; his old Kingsguard brother frowns and looks disgusted, and Jaime snorts — as if.

Ser Boros will certainly report back to Cersei. The scene is innocent enough, but Cersei could find conspiracy in a garden of summer lilies. Jaime tilts his head against the wall, enjoying the afternoon light and affecting an air of disinterest, but his ears are open all the same.

Brienne is showing Oathkeeper to Tommen. Its twin, shorter and slimmer, but with the same red-black ripples, hangs rather uselessly from Jaime's hip. Tommen had insisted after he heard what became his uncle in the Riverlands. Grandfather said this was a king's sword, Tommen had said presenting it somberly to Jaime, who accepted the blade knowing Cersei would seethe. Widow's Wail, Joff called it. The boy had always been an idiot.

“...very sharp, so mind your fingers,” Brienne is saying. “It must be ready for combat at any time. My old Master at Arms used to say, never carry a blade that you are not prepared to use.”

“And you’ve used it?” Tommen’s eyes must be round again.

“I have.”

“Did you use it when you saved Uncle Jaime?”

“I did.” Brienne pauses, considering how much to tell. “I did not save your uncle, Your Grace, so much as fight on his behalf. He needed a champion, you see.”

Jaime could protest this interpretation of events, but he does not stir, interested to see how the wench twists herself around this time. 

“Uncle said the outlaws believed he did something bad to the Starks. That’s why they captured him.”

“They did believe that, but wrongly so, and they were going to hurt him for it. I offered to be Lord Jaime’s champion to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Your uncle is an honorable man.” He is a cripple who cannot fight his own battles, but Brienne is too kind to say so.

Ser Boros chuckles.

“But they hurt you, too.” There’s a frown in Tommen’s voice. 

Jaime sits up in time to see Brienne peel a glare away from Ser Boros. Her eyes flick to Jaime, then back to Tommen. “We all take wounds in battle, Your Grace.”

“Knights do.” Tommen perks up. An idea leaps across his plump face. “Lady Brienne, I’m the king, you know, and kings can make knights. Perhaps I ought to make you one since you saved my uncle.”

Ser Boros coughs, looking as though he is going to speak. Jaime silences him with a cut of the eyes. He stands, watching Brienne.

But the wench blurts, “ _No_ ,” then reddens at the informality. “Forgive me, Your Grace, I — I meant no disrespect, only...I have unfinished duties. It would not be fitting for me to become a knight while I leave promises unfulfilled.”

Tommen looks puzzled. It has been some time since anyone told him _no_. He glances at Jaime, who feels torn between telling Tommen that a king must trust his own judgment and throttling the idiot of a wench who stands before him. A roll of the eyes suffices: “Never force a lady to do something she does not want, Tommen.” She is liable to bite off your ear. 

Brienne looks as though she would quite like to dissolve, but before anyone can speak further, Ser Boros answers a knock at the door. A page pokes his head in. “Your Grace, come quickly, if you please. Men have arrived from Dragonstone.”

Dragonstone? Last Jaime heard, Loras Tyrell had been dying gallantly there, no doubt to Cersei’s delight. A thousand Lannister men perished at Rolland Storm’s gate according to Aurane Waters, long gone. 

Jaime falls into step with Brienne as they all trek to the throne room. “Tell me you didn’t just throw away knighthood because of the girl.”

She doesn’t look at him. “I have not kept my promise. I am unworthy of the honor.”

“I shudder to imagine what you must think of me, then.” He says this as though she has held her tongue on the subject. No matter. In a few weeks she will be healed and he will be rid of her.

A crowd has formed at the doors to the throne room; Ser Boros shouts it aside, but hot and curious bodies press inward. Jaime puts a hand on Tommen’s shoulder, steering him along. Tommen hesitates inside, but follows Ser Boros down the length of the room, where he climbs atop the Iron Throne. The crown looks heavy on his head. Margaery is already waiting in the smaller seat at his side, along with Mace Tyrell, Harys Swyft, Paxter Redwyne, and a woman Jaime does not recognize. She looks like silk beside the aging noblemen, a straight black braid slinking past brown, whip-like arms. Her dark eyes catch and hold on Jaime’s as he and Brienne join the other lords in the gallery; he does not like the light that gleams there.

Several Lannister men at arms stand around a kneeling figure at Tommen’s feet. Jaime cannot make out the man’s face until Tommen asks him to stand and he sees that it is Loras Tyrell.

At Jaime’s shoulder, Brienne makes a soft noise of surprise. Before he set out for Dragonstone, Ser Loras was as handsome a knight as any in the Seven Kingdoms, limpid eyes set in an angular face that could almost cut you were it not softened by a mane of brown curls...and he still looks that way. Someone has roughed him up a bit — many a maiden will weep to see the bruise that marks his cheek — but Loras looks as lithe and healthy as when Jaime last saw him.

“Your Grace,” he says, bowing.

“Ser Loras.” Tommen can hardly contain his excitement. Oh, yes, Loras is a hero of his, Jaime remembers. Cersei thinks Loras is going to corrupt the lad — he stifles a chuckle, then stifles another at Brienne’s glare. 

Tommen sits forward eagerly, crown slipping down his forehead. “Ser Loras, we heard you were dead. Or dying, at least.”

“You heard from Aurane Waters, I am told. He left the city before Lady Cersei’s trial, did he not?” Loras tilts a look at his father. “I’ll wager he’d some agenda of his own. Lowborn men at court always do, Your Grace.”

One of the Lannister soldiers barks, “Liar!”

Tommen startles, shifting back and looking to Margaery for reassurance. The Rose Queen’s eyes are on her brother.

“Who are you?” asks Tommen.

“Name's Broden Traever, ‘f it pleases Your Grace. Ser Loras here put me and my men in charge of searching the castle after it fell, looking for gemstones and gold and the like. Or rather, a man of his told us to do so, as the lad was said to dying of some wound or the other. Well, I was at the front of the siege line, Your Grace, and I saw him take no such wound. Started to think something smelled bad after a month drug by and still no word of the lad’s death. Some men and I barged our way into his quarters, and what did we find? The boy, pretty as ever, though bored as a whore on the Wall, I’ll grant. He had been sitting up in that tower the whole time. He tried to make us swear to hold our tongues — wouldn’t say for what. Well, I knew something weren’t right, and that became a sure thing once the lad tried to fight his way through us after we threatened to send a raven to King's Landing. It took ten men to subdue him, and even more to get him out the castle past all those pretty roses. Hard traveling but,” Broden shrugs. “Brought him here.”

The court maunders feverishly at this. Jaime knows by now that Margaery will give nothing away, but Mace Tyrell’s face looks hard as stone. A rather reddish stone.

“Why didn’t you send a raven ahead?” asks Paxter Redwyne. 

“Did so. Got lost in the snow, I expect.”

“Your Grace…” Loras starts.

“Snivelling, flouncing liar,” someone hisses, nearly inaudible. Jaime does not need to look, but he does anyway. Cersei is stiff at his elbow. “Do you see it now, brother, how they have plotted against me? Tyrell and his sons and his whore daughter...Aurane Waters, too. They wanted me dead, wanted Loras out of the way so that I would have no champion to call upon with any hope of prevailing.”

Jaime can sense Ser Robert Strong at his back, towering over even Brienne. The wench doesn’t look away from the proceedings, but he can tell from the set of her body that she is listening. A strange affection flashes through him: smart girl; he would have told her later anyhow.

Cersei murmurs, “But they failed, didn’t they. You failed. And now Tommen will throw the pissant into a dungeon.” Her fingernails bite into Jaime’s arm and he has only time to think, why did they leave her with claws? before the same fingertips brush lightly over his skin, soothing. Here, she touches him. Here, in the court, in view of lords and ladies and a dead man. It would have thrilled him, once.

“I failed at nothing, Cersei,” he says wearily; he really is exhausted, suddenly. Can’t everybody see that, the drag in his step and the pits beneath his eyes? They will never stop, he realizes, no longer listening to Cersei or Tommen or Loras; the sieges, the courtly plots, the smallfolk crawling home to blackened farmland and missing daughters. There will always be another invader, another king, another usurper whispering in the right ears, another knight who turns his head because he must. Jaime has never been a stranger to the game, but now, watching Tommen’s legs dangle at the edge of the Iron Throne he thinks, no. No, not this one. His heart thuds with conviction.

He has fled somewhere in his mind and missed the rest of the proceedings, but surmises from Loras’s walk that Tommen has not, in fact, condemned him to a dungeon. Jaime watches a group of Gold Cloaks lead him out; Ser Meryn and Ser Boros herd Tommen through the King’s Door, followed closely by Mace Tyrell and Margaery. Cersei glides away as though indifferent but casts a look back at Jaime that says clearly: follow.

He turns to Brienne first. “Are you going to pretend you weren’t listening?”

“No.” Her cheeks redden; he almost wishes she had lied, just to see how scarlet she can get. “The whole castle knows you burned her letter.

“Nosy wench. I would have told you myself, only I thought you’d had enough of Lannister business.”

“She thinks you wanted her to die.”

Didn’t I? He cannot say — no, he is afraid to say, to think, even. Thoughts are dangerous; Cersei can always hear his. “We all feed the crows sometime,” he says.

He should walk Brienne partway back to her quarters, seeing as she is his guest, and injured at that, but he bids her farewell and trails after Cersei. His sister says nothing, strolling a pace ahead of him until they reach her solar. Robert Strong waits outside. Nothing good awaits Jaime inside that door, but he enters anyway — he always does.

A blast of wind smacks him across the face. The windows are open. “It’s bloody freezing.”

“My head aches these days,” says Cersei. It’s the wine. She flits from one end of the room to the other, practically hovering, as though deciding where precisely to place her rage. Jaime stays by the door.

“The Tyrells will never allow you to hurt Loras,” he says. “Nor the smallfolk. They love the Tyrells like they love their bread and salt, do you think they will care that Mace Tyrell didn’t want his son to die for you? He told me himself that the people of this city would tear you to pieces given half the chance.”

“Do you think I do not know that?”

“You don’t behave as though you do.”

“You weren’t here, Jaime.” Cersei turns, eyes flashing. “You cast me aside like a common whore. They made me walk: naked, raw, more prone than I have been since my name day, for at least you were with me then. The things they called me... My feet bled, and they laughed. Laughed at me, Jaime. Me, who was born to wear a crown. You always said so, do you remember?”

“I remember.” He takes a step towards her, then another. The glimmer in her eyes: he could kiss that away, let her fall into his arms as he always wished she would. Ask me, he thinks. Ask me to hold you, ask me to make it right. He would not be able to say no.

But Cersei blinks and he sees that the tears in her eyes aren't tears — they are flames, the kind he once killed a king to quench. “They are trying to take our son from me,” she says. “I won’t let them. We cannot let them.”

Jaime looks at his golden hand. “What do you propose?”

“Loras cannot remain in the Kingsguard. I will not have a rose holding my son’s life in his hands.” 

“Loras is the best sword left to Tommen.”

“He is a traitor,” Cersei hisses. “All of them are.”

“And how do you propose to get rid of him? The boy is returned and in good health. If he drops dead you can be sure people will notice, sister. Many a desirous maiden will faint with delight at the news of his arrival.”

“Something can be arranged. Qyburn has methods…” Cersei taps a finger against her cheek. “It is only a matter of who will replace him. The Kingsguard has been shorthanded for months anyhow. It must be someone of fabled strength, certainly, but the giant men of Westeros seem to be vanishing rapidly of late.”

Jaime leaves her there, plotting, dread heavy in his stomach. Despite the cold, his skin feels grimy and hot, as though if he moves too suddenly he will split open and soil the floor with Kingslayer stew. He could bathe, but he finds his way to Brienne’s chambers instead, and when she answers his knock he leads her into the belly of the castle, below the larders and the dungeons and into the chamber with of the dragon mosaic that he searched so months ago for a brother long gone. A shower of sparks lights the brazier in the corner, illuminating the surrounding tunnels and the scuffed tiles on the floor.

Brienne studies the dragon, which in the glowering firelight looks almost as though at any moment it may yawn, stretch its red and black wings, and glare at them. Jaime looks away. The mosaic reminded him of Rhaegar Targaryen, once; now, it just makes him think of Connington and a tiny red bundle on the floor of the throne room.

“Why have we come all this way?” asks Brienne.

Why did you trust me to bring you all this way? he almost asks, but instead says, “If Tommen asks you to join the Kingsguard, say no.”

Brienne looks astonished. “The Kingsguard? I am not even a knight.” She cuts off abruptly as they both recall that morning with Tommen at the same moment.

Jaime curses, begins pacing back and forth in front of the brazier. “Cersei’s plot, I’m sure of it now. She means to remove Loras from the Kingsguard and replace him with you. I don’t know how she will do it. An accident, I’d wager — accidents are common around my sister.”

“But Ser Loras was only returned this morning. If she meant for Tommen to make me a knight in his place, how could she know that Loras still lived?”

“She didn’t. Or, I don’t think she did, anyhow.” Jaime frowns. “Loras turning out to be a liar is only convenient for her. I think Cersei wanted you on the Kingsguard the moment she heard me mention your prowess with the sword.”

“Why?” Brienne looks as though she doesn’t understand, and maybe Jaime doesn’t either, but he knows Cersei, and his sister has never been half as subtle as she believes.

He says, “If you are in the Kingsguard, you can never marry. You will remain here in the Keep by Tommen’s side for the rest of his days, or yours. And I will, by Cersei’s design, return to Casterly Rock for the rest of mine. And so, Brienne, if anyone asks you to join the Kingsguard, tell them no.” Jaime pauses, taking in the look on her face. A thought occurs to him and he stops pacing. “That is, unless you want to join.”

Brienne closes her eyes. No, open them, he thinks. “I don’t know what I want. I have always wished to be a knight, but this morning, I…” 

“I understand,” says Jaime. She looks lost; it rends his heart. “Believe me, Brienne, I do. To feel unworthy is...it is a sour thing. But you aren’t that.”

She shakes her head. “I will not join the Kingsguard for some game.” 

“Cersei is persuasive.”

Her eyes say, you must know. “I am stubborn.”

Jaime laughs, a sound that surely has never before been heard in these dark tunnels. “Brienne, I know that, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've read any of my other fics, you'll know that i'm a sucker for the theory that loras is actually alive at dragonstone as a part of the grand tyrell conspiracy. i just think he's neat.
> 
> one of the best parts of cersei is that she's often so wrong that she ends up being right.


	7. Chapter 7

When he hears that Riverrun has fallen, he thinks of Bran Stark. That dream he had the night before the wedding: falling, falling, a wolf below him — he’d thought the gods had been trying to warn him, but that’s wrong, the wolves howled _above,_ and only snow awaited below. 

And there are no gods. And if there were, they certainly wouldn’t deign to warn Jaime of anything. Bran Stark pierced his dreams that night, clawing his way out of the grave with spindly, useless legs dragging behind him. He still remembers the tempo of the boy’s heart beneath his palm. Like a bird. It beat as though trying to make up for the heartbeats it would not get to live. “How old are you, boy?” he had asked, and when the answer came, seven, he’d held that up, prodded at it a moment. Seven, how heavily does that weigh? Lannisters pay their debts, he has always remembered that, so let it never be said that he didn’t mark it down in his accounts: seven. He pushed; the boy weighed nothing. Now he only wishes that he pushed harder, maybe turned the boy over to spare him the fate of having to die twice. Losing the best part of yourself is a kind of death. If Bran Stark still lived, maybe Jaime would tell him, be careful, lad. Who knows what death will make out of you. 

But Bran Stark is murdered, and actually, Jaime did not do it. 

“What happened to the smallfolk?” he asks.

Humfrey Waters, Commander of the City Watch, shrugs. “Many fell during the siege. Garlan Tyrell means to allow the men who surrendered to take the black with Tully and the rest of the Brotherhood who survived. Their party leaves for the North soon, though only the gods know if the Tyrell escorts will make it back.”

A good man, Garlan Tyrell. It wouldn’t do to slaughter the Blackfish like a pig in his ancestral home.

“What about the women and the children?"

Waters shrugs again; Jaime almost asks if he has a fly buzzing in his ear. “They’ll be turned out to the Riverlands. They can hardly stay in the castle having supported the usurpers.”

Jaime reassesses Garlan Tyrell.

Back to the Riverlands, with its blanket of snow wetting the firewood and smothering the last valiant harvests. The smallfolk would never have left their homes if the larders weren’t already empty. A death sentence. Jaime thinks of Bran Stark again, of snatching at the air. No more Tullys, no more Starks — almost. 

You always disappoint, Kingslayer, that’s what Brynden Tully told him while he was prying Riverrun from Tully hands the first time. 

He turns to Waters. “Find a man. No, two good men. Send one to Riverrun and one to the Rock. Tell them we’ll take the women and the children.”

“My lord?” Humfrey Waters stares.

“My father always said that a lord never repeats himself. Will you make me do so?” He rolls his eyes. “We will take them at the Rock. The Tyrells may send the men north to the Wall, but I’ll not have starving families roaming the Riverlands. Did the women take up swords? The children? I think not. Make sure the man you send to the Rock tells Damion Lannister to take stock of the larders.” Jaime pauses. “Send ravens, too. One or the other will survive the journey.”

He can see Waters thinking, you are Warden of the West, not Lord of the Trident. But the crown’s army holds Riverrun, now, and the Lannisters have always been such friends of the crown. Mayhaps this is folly, but Jaime recalls the hunched gray shoulders that shuffled down the River Road and thinks it might be justice.

Waters makes haste. Jaime turns; Brienne is watching him from the alcove over his shoulder. She’s come from breaking her fast with Tommen, who at nine years old does not understand that only disgraced Lannister cripples are meant to befriend homely wenches who shirk all other company.

“They will not take me up on it,” he says. “The Lannisters nigh razed the Riverlands to the ground.”

“Yes,” says Brienne.

“Wise not to accept invitations from lions these days.”

“It would seem so.” Brienne studies his face, then raises her eyebrows. “Are we going?”

It’s more than a month since they've returned to King’s Landing, and there is much to do for everyone who hasn’t been stripped of a white cloak, and who isn’t an ugly minor heiress, who despite her vanishing wounds has made no noise about departing. Jaime is Warden of the West, but the Westerlands are at peace, at least compared to the chaos in the Stormlands. 

Despite his assurances to Brienne, Storm’s End fell to the Targaryen boy — perhaps we should call him Aegon, now — and the Stormlords’ ravens are pecking each other’s eyes out trying to cram into the rookery. Your Grace, we need help immediately; Your Grace, you have Haystack’s unwavering loyalty; Your Grace, what do we do? Grandview has bent the knee; Bronzegate and Stonehelm may well be next, perhaps Tarth as well. Brienne studies the battle maps in silence.

And what did he say about Mace Tyrell? The Hand wavers, sending a force into the Riverlands to reclaim Riverrun on behalf of the Freys, though only a blind man couldn’t see that the Tyrells hold the Trident now. Jaime sends word to his castellan, Damion, to ready the Lannister host that remains at the Rock, but Tyrell frets about sowing alarm among the smallfolk. If the Lannisters come marching down the Gold Road, then what? The Sparrows will flit among the city, whispering that an army is coming to take their bread, to fight another unholy war, and did the Tyrells not promise peace? 

So they wait. 

Jaime passes the time exploring the Keep’s hidden passages with Brienne. The wench is healing well: the sling is gone, her gait is smooth, and the tear in her stomach pains her only a little. Gorman will take the stitches out soon, and then she will be free to return home to bend the knee or die nobly with her father, or perhaps to brave the journey to the Vale in search of Clegane’s party, from whom there has been no word.

If she is mulling over her options, Brienne gives little hint of it to Jaime, and he finds that his tongue falters each time he thinks to ask. They wind their way, sometimes hunched, often coughing, through dark tunnels in the walls, where there is little light to see Brienne’s face when Jaime pokes at her. Teasing is dull when he can’t see that blush or that scowl, and speaking of the Stormlands only makes her fall into a tense silence, so they fill the hours with other, lighter talk. 

There are many mysteries in the Keep; they discover some of them together. 

The tunnels are where they go now, slipping behind a wooden panel in the stables and winding with confidence through the darkness beyond. Follow that one to the left, and you’ll find yourself behind the servants’ quarters, where Jaime discovered to his delight that he got twin bastards on the No-Longer-Maid of Tarth — at that, Brienne had shoved the laughter out of his lungs and snapped, “You’ve far too much nerve for your own good.” Take the one straight ahead and you’ll have to pick your way around cat skeletons, but you can make your way to the central concourse of tunnels, where you can get almost anywhere: they find routes to the throne room, the Tower of the Hand, even one that lets out into Blackwater Bay. 

They learn them all together; it was Brienne’s curiosity that led them back into the belly of the Keep, but Jaime is happy enough to follow along where prying eyes cannot see. But there is something depraved about this place. The Red Keep has more to hide than Jaime ever imagined. How many dead secrets fester here, he wonders. How many living ones? 

On this day, they follow a passage off the central concourse that Brienne thinks might lead to the White Tower. 

“Good, perhaps I can smuggle the White Book out of Robert Strong’s moldering hands,” says Jaime. 

Striding ahead with the torch, Brienne glances over her shoulder. “You worry what he may write?”

“I am worried he does not write at all. Not that the lot on this Kingsguard are committing an abundance of great deeds.” He supposes someone ought to write down that Loras ended the siege of Dragonstone, though given what happened after, the boy may wish that deed to remain untold. 

Jaime coughs. “It smells like lavender in here.” 

“Perhaps we are beneath a garden?” Brienne looks around, swinging the torch this way and that. Jaime thinks of the dream beneath the weirwood, of the flaming sword in Brienne’s hand. What an evil darkness that had been. Was it meant to be this one? He shudders and looks down at his boots, half expecting to find water to lap at his toes, but there is only dust. 

“Is something wrong?” Brienne asks.

Jaime shakes himself. “Only a chill, my lady. I am too delicate for winter.”

Brienne frowns. She looks him up and down; he always has to stop himself from asking what it is she sees. This time he doesn’t have to: “You look tired lately,” she says, almost absently. The torch dips a little in her hand, as though she means to singe the hair off him and leave him raw and sparkling as a babe. He could almost ask her to do it. The Mad King thought fire would transform him into a dragon; what would it make out of Jaime?

I am like the Prince of Dragonflies, I could leave it all behind and burn, in the end.

But something scuffs in the tunnel ahead, and the moment passes.

“Who’s there?” Brienne asks sharply, whirling. She thrusts the torch into Jaime’s hand and puts her own on Oathkeeper.

“Peace, my lady,” says a soft voice, creeping into the light. “Forgive me if I caused you any alarm. Isn’t that funny, how in the dark even such as me can frighten such as you?”

“I am frightened of no man.”

“He isn’t a man,” says Jaime. He drops the torch to the floor and snatches Lord Varys by the shirt and slams him up against the wall. The eunuch squeals, legs dangling. He is heavier than Jaime expected; somehow, the weight seems obscene.

“You,” Jaime spits. “I left you with one task, and it ended with my father dead. Convince me not to gut you like a pig here and now.”

“A mistake, my lord, a mistake.” Varys coughs; Jaime’s hand is tight around his throat.

“Put him down,” says Brienne. “He carries no weapon.”

“No blade, perhaps.” Jaime lets go. His arm could not bear the weight much longer anyway. Varys scrambles out of reach. “What in the buggering hells are you doing here, eunuch? Speak quickly, and without riddles.”

“Of course, my lord.” Varys smooths a hand down his tunic, wafting that sickly smell. “It was not safe for me here after Lord Tyrion’s escape. I have been here and there, in Westeros and Essos, and in these dank places which are nowhere, really.” He smiles. “But you mean to ask why I am here now. I will speak frankly, my lord — you have been paying attention to Aegon Targaryen’s designs?”

“If you are here, you know we have.” 

The eunuch’s eyes blink slowly, like a toad’s. _We_ , he is thinking. “I will tell you of Aegon. The boy was not born to rule. The concept seems strange to us Westerosi, I know, but let me explain: Aegon is the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne, yet he has lived as rough a life as a common fisherman. He can wield a blade, he knows the gods intimately, he is learned when it comes to histories of this continent and others.”

“Have you met many fishermen, my lord?” asks Brienne.

“More than you might expect, my lady of Tarth.” But Varys inclines his head. “Aegon is not a born ruler. He has been made into one, honed like those twin blades you carry. He plays no game of thrones. He simply fights for what is his by blood. Aegon is here for his birthright. Aegon is here to rule.”

“And you,” says Jaime, “you are here to make sure he does rule.”

“Whispers can make kings and unmake them. I wonder, my lord, if I should ask your advice on the latter.”

There is a whisper, steel sliding from its scabbard. Brienne levels Oathkeeper at Varys’s throat. “If your Aegon knows his histories so well, perhaps he ought to teach you.” She towers. “You’ll make no threats on King Tommen’s life, Lord Varys.”

Brienne, is this because my son showed you his pets? Is it because he stands on tiptoe to grasp your hand? Jaime wonders, is it for me? Lord Varys is watching him. 

“It is no threat I make,” he says. “The Warden of the West understands, for he has thought on it himself. I am here to make an offer.”

“Brienne,” says Jaime slowly, wondering if she will slit his throat in the name of a Lannister king, “Tommen sits the throne poorly. He cannot play the game.” Don’t you see his hands when he eats? Even the throne cuts him.

“He is young.”

“He is _mine._ ” The word cracks like a frozen whip. Varys and Brienne step back to avoid the icy shards. “There is nothing kingly in the lad; he will be ruined. That’s what happens here: children come to court and they leave in shrouds.” He turns to Varys. “The boy, Aegon. Is he true? Is he of Rhaegar’s blood?”

“Does it matter?” asks Varys gently. “The red shrouds disguised much that day, my lord. Did you look beneath them? Did anyone?"

“You cannot mean to depose Tommen.” Brienne sounds shocked. “He would not be safe. Not at Casterly Rock, not in Essos, not on the Wall. That is no life for a boy.”

“My sister said the same of you,” Jaime snaps. Brienne recoils. He could cut out his own tongue at the look on her face. “Forgive me,” he mutters. “You did not deserve that. But think of Tommen. Not a thought enters his head that someone hasn’t planted there. By the time he is fit to rule, he will speak with Cersei’s voice.” He thinks of Joffrey and shakes his head.

“It is only a matter of getting him out of the city. How long do we have, weeks, months, before Aegon hacks through the Kingswood? I can shelter him at the Rock for a time, but Tommen will always be a threat, even if he bends the knee. Myrcella, too.” Jaime trails off, thinking, avoiding Brienne’s eyes. 

Varys clears his throat. “My lord Lannister…my birds in Dorne whisper of sinister plots. Some of the Dornish thought to crown Princess Myrcella Queen over her brother, resulting in the girl’s tragic disfigurement. Your uncle Kevan Lannister ordered her return to King’s Landing before his death, kept quite secret to ensure her safety. She and Ser Balon were meant to return with Nymeria Sand.” He stops, watching Jaime. “It would appear that the girl is...well, gone.”

The tunnels are silent, swallowing another secret.

“Gone,” repeats Jaime. Gone. “What do you bloody mean, _gone_? And why hasn’t Nymeria Sand spoken of this?”

“You ask me to interpret, my lord, but I only repeat. Myrcella and Ser Balon have vanished somewhere between here and Dorne, that is what I know. Why Nymeria Sand would stay silent about such a thing….”

“I’ll kill her,” snarls Jaime. He turns on his heel, but Brienne slams him against the wall.

“Are you mad?” she hisses. “Smuggling Tommen out of the city, killing his advisors. They will have your head on a pike, and his too. Do you not hear yourself?”

“You heard the eunuch, I know something of unmaking kings.” He pushes back at her, but the wench’s grip is like iron. 

“I will not let you. Go to Mace Tyrell about Nymeria Sand —”

“You won’t _let_ me?” Jaime laughs freely, wondering if he is going insane, wondering that he never understood the Mad King’s obsession with fire until now; you don’t need a sword hand to watch something burn. 

“Brienne,” he says. Calm, now. He smiles at the tiny Jaime in her eyes. “I would follow you most anywhere. But in this, you had best step aside.”

Have you nothing in you but betrayal, Kingslayer? Brienne looks disappointed, which is to say, she looks angry. She is only a child. When Jaime removes her hands from his shoulders, she does not resist.

He turns to Varys. “I will help you in this. Rhaegar should have been king. If I can see his blood on the Iron Throne…” Perhaps he will not dream so often of Elia Martell. Perhaps he will no longer imagine Rhaenys hiding beneath her father’s bed and watching the black boots and red capes tramp ever closer.

Varys bows low. “I will be in contact, my lord. For now, we must ensure that Tommen feels safe in your company, as it must be you who secrets him from the city when the time comes.”

Jaime nods. “Eunuch,” he says as Varys turns to disappear, “how is it that Tyrion came to murder our father?”

“I couldn’t say, my lord.” Varys smiles; perhaps it is his way of locking secrets behind his teeth. “I was not there.”

Then they are alone. The torch is sputtering out on the floor, but neither of them retrieves it.

Jaime looks at Brienne. “Do you hate me, wench?”

“Sometimes it seems that hate is all you want from me.” Brienne swivels, starts striding back the way they came. 

Jaime jogs to keep up. “If I cannot have your help, I must have your silence. Brienne. Listen to me. You stupid, ugly —”

He scarcely ducks in time to avoid the fist that swings his way. Grunting with effort, he shoves his good hand against Brienne’s chest, sending her stumbling backward, but she catches hold of his wrist and wrenches him off balance. Jaime loses his feet and has to throw a hand against the wall for balance — the wrong hand, the wrong _bloody_ buggering hand. The golden fixture jams against the wall, sending fire shooting up his wrist. He shouts with the pain of it.“Fucking —” But when they hurt you, you must always step in, not away. Jaime lashes out with his elbow, feels it connect with Brienne’s side and drive the breath from her lungs. She gasps and staggers back and catches herself on the opposite wall.

They stand there, gasping breaths as though peace is in the air and there is no other way to obtain it. Brienne holds her stomach. Jaime, you stupid sod. 

He says, “Keep on like that, and you’ll tear your stitches.”

Brienne breaths out hard, which is a laugh, and Jaime almost smiles before she reaches up to swipe at her eyes.

“Oh, Brienne. If it hurts, I —"

“You stupid man.” Brienne turns away. “Who are you to bring me here, away from my duty, and ask this of me? To remove the king and start another war? And to see you and your blood dead...Jaime, I will not do it. On my honor, I will say nothing of this. For you. For you, only. But I plead with you — forget this...this folly. Tommen needs you by his side, he does not need another hand pulling at him. You would condemn him to a life in hiding, as Lady Sansa is in hiding.”

It always comes back to the accursed Stark girl. Sansa haunts Jaime’s dream of late, too. He cannot recall her features, so she always floats, faceless, tangled in red hair. 

He wants to tell Brienne that he killed his father by freeing Tyrion, but she knows that already. He wants to tell her that Bran Stark thought Jaime was going to lift him safely into the tower, but she knows that, too. What had she said? All he wants from her is hate?

Jaime makes himself smile. “It seems we find ourselves at odds again.” And I still owe you a dance.

They plod blindly through the tunnels until they reach the entrance by the stables and slip into the horse yard. They part so little these days, but it feels odd to walk side-by-side after a brawl. Jaime cannot right his golden hand alone; Brienne has to pause and help him with the straps. 

Near the sept, a man comes running. “My lord, my lady,” he gasps, “the Hand of the king sends for you at once. Ser Loras Tyrell has been injured.”

Jaime looks at Brienne, and they run.

Grand Maester Gorman has Loras on a table, but you can hardly catch a glimpse of the boy between the bodies that press around him. Women, mostly, fawning. Unless Loras has hit his head, they will be disappointed as ever. He would have said so to Brienne, but she is stiff beside him.

“What happened?” Jaime asks Harys Swyft, who scratches his head. Gorman waves the ladies out of the room as Loras moans.

“Lad was riding in the tiltyard when his stallion bucked under him. Nasty thing, snapped at every man who tried to calm it. Loras ran him at the other knight, got thrown. His head hit the ground hard” — here, Jaime almost laughs — “and I thought he was dead, but he opened his eyes after a minute or two. Leg snapped at the shin. He’ll live, though how well is anyone’s guess.”

“The other knight,” says Jaime. “Who was it?”

Swyft curls his lip. “That Ser Robert Strong.”

Yes, it would be. He looks at Brienne; she has heard and has a hard set to her mouth. Jaime calls one of the hovering women in and says in her ear, find the horse Ser Robert Strong rode today. FInd out if she is in heat.

He knows that trick. And there is Cersei, appearing as though your dark thoughts could conjure her. She examines the break; the bone stabs through the skin, jagged. It is always surprising, seeing a man’s bones. They are whiter than you expect. 

Cersei asks, “Will he walk again?”

Gorman answers, “Difficult to say, my lady. He will surely always limp.” Loras is asleep now, or he surely would have paled at this. Jaime thinks, if they had taken my leg instead of a hand, ten Briennes would not have been enough to convince me to live. 

“He had only just returned to the Kingsguard,” says Boros Blunt.

“He may yet recover,” says Jaime. “I stayed on after I lost my hand.”

“And where did that get you?” someone mutters. Brienne’s fingers flex.

Tommen hurries in, Ser Meryn shepherding behind. “Ser Loras,” he cries, rushing to the table.

“He cannot hear you, child,” says Cersei.

“Is he dead?”

“Only maimed.” Cersei looks at Jaime.

“Can he still be in my Kingsguard?”

There is a pause. Mace Tyrell, white with worry, says, “Your Grace, a knight needs his legs…”

Sharp observation, my Lord Hand. Here is mine: you would rather have Loras married off than stuck in white. You’ve already one son with a limp, anyhow.

“And who to replace him?” asks Cersei. “I’ll not have my son poorly guarded, Lord Tyrell.” Her voice rises in pitch. “Not after Joffrey —”

Unease sweeps the room. Ser Loras had been the last able sword left to Tommen, and everyone except for the two inept swords in the room knows it.

“Settle, my lady,” says Harys Swyft. “A man will be found. Perhaps Ser Theoden Wells, or Ser Dermot.”

“Neither,” says someone. Says Brienne. “Me. I will replace him. I have served on one Kingsguard already, it would honor me to do so again.”

She looks at Jaime, defiant: will you try to stop me?

He has never seen a woman so determined to hang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: i don't think kevan's message to dorne was meant to be a secret in canon, but my house my rules.
> 
> this is turning into a bit of a beast. maybe it's the quarantine talking, but i have a bit of an inkling to take this all the way to the endgame. probably none of you will be reading by them. but it will be here, maybe.
> 
> updates will continue!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: brief mentions of rape and child abuse

Take a step back, if you will. King’s Landing is a dark place, a rotting place, but there is rot all over Westeros; King’s Landing is only the heart of it. An agent of that rot sails into Oldtown with the Ironborn at his back and laughs while he cuts down learned men who don’t yet know that they are too late to keep magic out of the world. He pries open his third eye and screams, not in pain but in awe; he pries it open and Sees. 

He was a student once, this agent of rot, but something in him broke, or maybe it was always broken. 

A man without a face hands him the Horn of Winter, and the agent climbs to the top of the Hightower and presses his blue lips to it and blows. They hear it in King’s Landing, in the Neck. They hear it in Essos and Sossos and at the bottom of the Narrow Sea. They hear it on the Wall. The Wall, which Brandon the Builder forged in a time long forgotten. The Wall, which holds back the nightmares.

They hear it at the Wall, and the Wall crumbles. It folds on itself. And the nightmares are free.

Why? Because he, Euron, is a horror: he is the rot, the black phlegm that coats dying men’s lungs. He has been patient this long, but monsters crave the night. And night, it is said, once had a king.

* * *

They put Brienne to the test three days after the ear-splitting sound that rocked the very foundations of the Keep. Things had been a bit mad after that: horses screaming, children screaming, women screaming — and a fair number of lords joining them. The smallfolk still haven’t settled; Qyburn says that the High Sparrow is preaching that the gods are bellowing their rage, or some such blige. If he hadn’t fallen to his knees with the force of it, Jaime might have thought the whole thing was nonsense. 

They say the sound was loudest in Oldtown, and a day later comes the news that the ancient city had earlier fallen to Euron Greyjoy of all people. “What can he possibly want with Oldtown?” Mace Tyrell fumes. “What need for dust and old books has a man who went to Valyria and back?”

Uncle Gerion went to Valyria, or tried to. Men are drawn to doom, Jaime supposes. It is why every boy longs for a sword.

In the yard below, Brienne’s blunted tourney blade flashes in Meryn Trant’s face, thumping painfully on his shoulder. The watching men hoot as though she is a squire who has scored a lucky blow. Meryn fucking Trant. Jaime snorts. A pity Barristan Selmy disappeared; that would have been a fight to remember.

“I will not be replaced by a woman,” says Loras through gritted teeth. Is this what men like Loras always worry about? He lies supine to Jaime’s left, reeking leg hanging from a sling.

“It doesn’t seem you have a choice about it,” says Jaime. From the window, he watches Brienne sidestep Meryn Trant’s blade, kick him in the stomach, and level her sword at his white-clad throat. “They haven’t given her much of a challenge.”

“I won’t stand by and be humiliated.” 

“No, won’t be standing anytime soon,” Jaime agrees. Loras flushes. “Listen to me, pup. Forget whatever your father’s maester told you — you will never walk properly again. Surely you’ve seen men with breaks like this before; they limp until their dying day. Best reconcile yourself with that now. Flesh and bone don’t care what dreams of glory you once had.”

“And you?” says Loras. “Have you reconciled yourself about that?” He nods at Jaime’s golden hand. “I’ve trained on my off hand, I know it is a ghost of the other. Have you given up on your dreams of glory?”

Loras is smirking, but Jaime only shrugs. “I suppose I’ll never win a tourney again.” 

Below, Ser Theoden is faring only marginally better than Ser Meryn. The crowd has quieted now. 

Jaime remembers a story he heard in the Riverlands. He turns to Loras. “The wench said she beat you in a melee.” Mayhaps it would comfort Loras to hear that Brienne gave Jaime a thrashing, too, but the boy’s glare is too sweet to ruin.

“I thought she was going to beat my skull in,” mutters Loras. “All to win Renly’s approval, not that she ever got it. Renly thought she was —” 

“Yes, yes, a freak in man’s garb, you’ve said.”

“That never stopped her being in love with him.” Loras looks mutinous behind a mane of brown curls; his pout is pretty as Margaery’s. “Everyone could see it. Even the fools who tried to woo her. I suppose that made it more fun, though none of them were smiling in the end.”

Jaime laughs. “Brienne had suitors?”

“Not truly. Hyle Hunt and Mark Mullendore and a few others had a wager between them to see who could take her maidenhead first. They courted her as you might the Maiden herself, though it was naturally all an act. Lord Tarly had to put an end to it. All the same, they couldn’t walk properly for days after the melee, she battered them so terribly.” 

“Ser Hyle Hunt? His arms are a brown stag slung on a pole?”

“That’s the one.” 

Jaime ponders that.

The fight in the yard is done, and men are coming forward with white Kingsguard armor. Brienne removes the armor Jaime commissioned for her and dons the new set. The men ought to cheer, but they watch in silence as she says the vows. She cuts a striking figure in all white, Jaime will admit that. Strong, you might even say noble. He turns sharply away. 

He leaves Loras dozing off on the milk of the poppy and wanders back towards his quarters. Brienne will be at Tommen’s side almost constantly now, keeping her eyes open for conniving, traitorous Lannisters. How defiant she had looked when she stepped forward! Neither, she had said. Me. I’ll replace him. Jaime almost could have kissed her if he hadn’t wanted to throttle her instead. 

Cersei appeared triumphant, but the business wasn’t done yet. A woman? The watching lords whispered, aghast. Jaime would have joined them, once, had he never been on the wrong end of Brienne’s sword.

“I require no titles of knighthood,” said Brienne. “Sandor Clegane was no knight, but he was granted a white cloak all the same. I can prove myself against any man here.”

All eyes flicked to Jaime, who without turning his glare away from Brienne had said, “The Maid of Tarth has already bested me when I had two hands. I hardly think a one-handed swordsman is an apt challenge.”  
  
Even Meryn Trant wields a sword better than Jaime these days.

He had stormed from the room in search of Nymeria Sand and found her, of all places, in the rookery, surrounded by _quork_ ing ravens. She seemed unsurprised to see him; he will remember that later.

A mocking tilt of the lips. “My Lord of Lannister.”

“Nymeria Sand.” He had smiled too, equally mocking. There is nothing so predatory as the right kind of smile. “You must be exhausted of all the courtly pleasantries, coming from a place so untamed as Dorne, so I shall make it brief: tell me what happened to Myrcella Baratheon, or I will gut you like a trout and let the ravens feast.”

“The pretty little girl. Why, I was wondering when someone would ask.” Nymeria held out one long finger and stroked the raven perched on her fist. “You don’t care much for little girls in King’s Landing, do you?”

“I certainly shan’t miss you.”

“No, I think not.” Nymeria paused, then sighed. “I will tell you the story, Lannister, but take your hand off that sword. Calm, now? Very well. First, let me say this: your princess never wanted to return to King’s Landing. When the news from your uncle arrived she begged, pleaded, wept — I had never seen her weep. ‘Don’t make me go back,’ she said to me, terrified of what her mother would say at the sight of her face, marred as it is. Well, I’ve a soft place in my heart for little girls. I agreed to let her sail back to Dorne, fully expecting that Prince Doran would send her straight back the other way. Myrcella and her minder” — she meant Ser Balon — “went aboard the ship and sailed off. I went on ahead. And, as I understand it, the ship never made it to Dorne.”

“Where is it?”

“Sunk, Jaime Lannister. Your princess’s ship went down on the winter seas.”

Jaime’s heart thundered, but he stamped it quiet, forced himself to get out, “And you, snake, said nothing of this.”

“What should I have said?” Nymeria narrowed her eyes. “Halfway to the city, I received word that Kevan Lannister was dead. A real pity,” she added with cold courtesy. “Already, some blamed the Dornish. What would they say if word came at the same moment that Myrcella Baratheon vanished between Dorne and King’s Landing? No, better to keep it silent, let the king believe his sister is in Dorne, and let Dorne believe she is in King’s Landing.”

Jaime curled his lip and tore Widow’s Wail from its scabbard. Just as fast, there was a knife in Nymeria’s hands. She watched him from behind molten eyes. “My uncle warned me that King’s Landing is full of snakes. You aren’t one, I think. No, you are every inch the lion. A pity. I have always loved snakes.”

“Leave the Keep now,” said Jaime, “and you may escape a life in the Black Cells.”

“For what? Obeying my princess?” Nymeria smiled. “No, just as I said nothing, so now shall you. Would you start a conflict with Dorne even as Aegon’s breath warms your windows? He is coming, Lord Lannister, and I should think your little king would rather not fight two wars at once.”

Threatened into silence by a woman. Jaime spits at the memory. 

He spends the day brooding, forcing himself not to think of Myrcella, whom he never knew; or of Genna; or of wolves pulling blue snakes from Daven’s stomach. The word from Damion Lannister is that smallfolk are trickling steadily into the Rock; empty a man’s belly and house loyalties become a fading memory. They will be safe there — Jaime has done that much, at least.

That much and little else. He flexes his left hand, trying to remember how his body used to sing when he attached a blade to it. What had Brienne said by the fire so long ago? _My blood was on fire that day_. His, too, though he supposes he will never feel that again, and neither will the wench. He has broken his side of the mirror. 

What is there to do when you are a maimed lord whose proper place, everyone seems to agree, is beneath his Rock? There are letters, which he opens and struggles to read; there are documents to approve and send off to Tommen and his Hand to stamp; there is a serving girl who makes eyes at him from the corner until he finally sends her out. Tyrell cousins, Margaery’s (whorish, scheming, hisses Cersei) retinue, flutter around him wherever he walks, stroking his good hand and never his maimed wrist, each one willing to court the Kingslayer if it means securing her place as Lady of the Rock. Or perhaps they only hope to go to bed with him; the thought gives him pause, but he imagines undressing them with his golden hand pinned to his side and feels ill.

As night falls, he hears familiar heavy footsteps in the hall and rises swiftly, poking his head out the door. “Brienne,” he says. She is about to enter her chambers; Jaime follows, slipping through the door that she props open for him. 

Brienne sinks to her untouched bed. She wears her Kingsguard whites, the white cape billowing on the sheet behind her. If she were a different kind of woman, you might think it was her skirt and call for a lady to adjust it. Brienne tugs at the clasps herself. She does not look at Jaime, but neither does she tell him to leave, so he says, “Shall I help you carry your things to the White Tower?” 

Brienne shakes her head, folds the cloak in her lap. “I’m to remain here. They do not want a woman sleeping among them.” 

“Trant and the rest?” Cersei will be disappointed. She wants Brienne as far across the Keep as architecture permits. “They should be honored to share the Tower with a sword such as you.”

“Mace Tyrell claims they would not be able to — to help themselves around a woman.” 

Jaime curls his lip. “I would like to see them try.” Actually, he wouldn’t. He thinks of the Goat and tries to curl his phantom hand into a fist; it twinges painfully and he rubs at the stump. The golden fixture lies at his bedside next door. 

Brienne catches the movement. “It pains you still?”

“Only when I wish I could use it.” He sits on a plush loveseat across from the end of her bed and watches long, deft fingers pry the armor from her skin. “I thought you might be with the king this night.”

“Ser Robert guards Tommen during the night, I’m told.” Brienne unstraps her gauntlets and glances at him. She must miss her stumble-tongued squire; perhaps he should find her another. “Your sister has taken to sleeping in his chambers.”

Jaime’s mouth dries. He wonders briefly at something sinister, but no, not even Cersei would do such a thing. It was me she always wanted, her other half. She is merely protective of Tommen, or perhaps unwilling to be parted from the revenant that shadows her steps. 

Brienne frowns. “You will tell that to Vary I suppose,” she says glumly. 

“I did not —”

“I don’t care what you did not. I care what you are doing.” Brienne turns away, surrounded by a growing pile of white. Jaime studies each piece of steel as she pries it off, recalling how his master at arms taught him each one before he could even hold a sword: vambrace, tasset, plackart, greaves. Peel the skin off a knight and what lies beneath? A thin white shirt and brown linen bases, in Brienne’s case. She struggles with the pauldron; it is difficult to reach around for all those straps.

Jaime rises, comes behind her, shoos her fingers aside with his own. Brienne stiffens and makes to turn, but lets her arms drop when she feels him prise the offending piece away. Then the other. He has not done this for anyone since he squired for Sumner Crakehall. The gorget and breastplate he unbuckles and sets carefully on the bed. He is ever so cautious as to ensure that the tips of his fingers only skim the fabric beneath. Hold your breath, Kingslayer, it is stirring the ends of her hair. Finally, there are only the greaves and cuisses left, which she can do herself. 

Jaime steps back, chewing on a sigh. How is your stomach healing, he means to ask, but fears that words will send her fluttering into the rafters.

Brienne is the color of a lover’s rose as she sits on the edge of the bed and works at her greaves, watching her own hands as if they might reveal something fascinating. And Jaime means to leave her to it, he does truly, but her gaze is so intent: he thinks, perhaps there _is_ something beneath.

Then he is before her again, this time kneeling between her feet. “Jaime.” Brienne’s breath catches on a warning as his hand slips over hers. 

“Let me, Brienne. It was I who sent your squire away, after all.” I am not a knight, I have no squire — he hears her say it so clearly that he nearly pulls away. But she has not spoken: she stares at him wide-eyed and wary. She looks like she cannot remember how to send him away. Go on, Brienne: I want only the worst from you, don’t you remember? She says nothing, but pulls her hand slowly from beneath his. It is not a rejection but an invitation. Jaime bends, holds her eyes while he fiddles with the straps on her greaves. One hand and kneeling make the task slow; Brienne has to hold the piece in place for him. He can feel the heat behind his eyes and knows he should look away, but he cannot. He cannot remember how. He is hanging from a noose and lacks a sword hand to cut it down.

The greaves and the cuisses now litter the floor around him. He is kneeling with a hand on Brienne’s ankle and they have not filled the silence between them. 

“Hyle Hunt,” he says stupidly.

Brienne twitches back. “What?”

“Ser Hyle. Loras Tyrell told me about a wager in Renly’s camp —”

She stands suddenly; he has to lurch to his feet to avoid being knocked backward. “Leave me. Find your own chambers, or the White Tower. They are more likely to welcome such as you before they welcome such as me.”

Jaime sneers, startled by her reaction. “Do you pity yourself now? Now that you joined a brotherhood that will never love you to serve a king whose crown will soon be knocked from his head? You think to sulk in your chambers and think of all the oaths you are breaking to keep this one?”

“You are being cruel for cruelty’s sake. You taunt me even after…” She looks at the armor around her feet, as though his intentions might be written on the white steel. 

Jaime’s blood burns hot enough to make him dizzy; he can think only of men leering at her in the yard, of wandering hands that Ser Meryn cannot control, of Hyle Hunt slinging Brienne’s mostly-broken body across Jaime’s lap and giving the horse a smack on the arse. He wants to kick the cuisse by his feet, would kick it if he thought Brienne would ever forgive him. At the door, he says, “You deserve better than him, my lady. But now I fear you will never see it.”

He should never have brought her to this place, with its politicking and secret tunnels and women whose fangs you would see if only you peeled back their painted lips. Trust Brienne to throw herself headlong at the first hopeless cause that pawed at her feet. She loves a lost cause: Renly, the Young Wolf’s campaign, the Stark girls, now Tommen’s kingship. Me? he wonders, then shakes his head. You think you can save everyone, then you grow up. 

A boy goes skittering off from behind a column, no doubt on his way to whisper into Cersei’s ear, or Nymeria Sand’s, or Mace Tyrell’s. The Kingslayer visited his whore again last night, my lady. He undressed her where no one could see.

The Others bugger the Kingsguard knights and these squabbling lords and Aegon Targaryen reborn. Jaime finds his bed and sinks into it and sleeps long and dreamless.

* * *

The Others do not bugger Aegon. The boy’s Golden Company are gathering into a seething mass at Storm’s End; Tarth bends the knee, so do Haystack and Felwood. 

Though he knows she had no such designs, Jaime supposes Brienne’s joining the Kingsguard puts her in safer standing now: Kingsguard have no house loyalties, cannot inherit lands. It matters not what she thinks of her father, though in private she tells Jaime that he has not responded to her ravens begging him to name some Tarth cousin as his heir. “Perhaps he hopes I will renounce the white cloak, or perhaps he is dead,” she says miserably. 

Aegon will be through the Kingswood in a month, perhaps a bit longer if the snows favor the crown. Jaime orders as many men back from Dragonstone as he can, and a quarter of the Lannister foot from the Rock. The Tyrell army camps outside the city, some 40,000-strong, but the rest are scattered throughout the snow-choked Reach, and will never arrive in time. It will not be enough, Jaime thinks. He tells Varys as much. With the Stormlords, the Golden Company, and the smallfolk who have long believed that Tommen is a bastard on Aegon’s side, the city will fall. The Blackwater is frozen over and Tyrion is long gone; no clever tricks this time. Nymeria Sand, serene, claims that Dorne bears no allegiance to Aegon, but has no answer when Mace Tyrell thunders with rage at Prince Doran’s silence. “If the Dornish have supplied Aegon and Connington with any host at all, the city won’t last two weeks,” Jaime says to Varys. “The smallfolk and the Sparrows are prophesying the end times after the blast from Oldtown as it is. If they hear Rhaegar’s blood has come again, it will be chaos. We’ll be fighting on both sides of the walls.” 

Tommen is too young to understand the threat to his life. To him, death is what happens to the stiff brown mice that his cats drop at his feet; it is not being dragged from beneath a bed and watching, as if from afar, as a gleeful grin plunges a knife into your belly, over and over. Jaime finds his way to the lad’s side as often as he can, supping with him, watching him hold court, standing by while the smiths fit him for a suit of armor that will do him no good. Cersei glowers, always in the corner of his eye, but what can she do, except smile savagely and spit in his wine?

He takes Tommen to the horse yard and sits him on a real mount, not a boy’s pony, and shows him how to press his small feet against the beast’s sides to make it run. The king mostly laughs; he likes to hold straw in his hands for the horses to whuffle at with their soft lips. Jaime grins at Brienne in her Kingsguard whites, watching Tommen turn Honor in a neat circle. He is making sure the boy can sit a horse well enough to race away from the city; he is teaching his son to ride.

To what he’s sure is Cersei’s delight, he and Brienne miss each other often. She is by Tommen’s side much of the day and drilling in the yard when she is not. Jaime guesses the work takes her mind off her father’s predicament — it’s what he would have done. In those weeks he sees her most often at night, when she retires to bed and sometimes has a word or two for him. They do not speak of Tarth, or of Jaime slipping away to meet Varys, or of Hyle Hunt and that night in her chambers. Something slipped that night: he said too much or too little, and now Brienne doesn’t seem to know where to fit him. There is distance now; he does not like it, does not know what to say to the woman who calls him cruel but seeks out his company anyway.

One night, tongue loosened by a goblet of wine, he ventures, “I won’t say that you must forgive me, Brienne, but it would ease me greatly.”

They are watching a group of boys shovel the snow beneath Jaime’s window; the paths must be cleared for lords’ feet by morning. Brienne tilts her head, hair falling away from her scarred cheek. “You’ll have to specify for which sin.”

He laughs. “All of them — no one knows the list better than you. No, I…” He is not good at this, at asking. “I have made a right mess of things. Sending you from one end of Westeros to the next, subjecting you to rumors, making my intentions more than unclear. You deserve more than that. I have asked things of you that I would not ask of anyone else...and I do so again now. I’ve not asked forgiveness from anyone, not for a pardon, not to free myself from Robb Stark’s dungeon..but I ask you, Brienne, stubborn that you are, to forgive me for being an arse. And let that be the last I ask of you.”

She hunches in her chair as though hoping those massive shoulders will hide her face. “It is not your fault that Hyle and the rest did what they did.”

“That is _hardly_ what I meant.”

“I reacted poorly that night. I should not have, it was unbecoming. You...you were only trying to be kind.”

Jaime almost laughs again. Kind? He’d wanted her permission to splinter Hunt’s ribs when next they met. Because that was easier. It is easier to break a man’s ribs than to look at a woman whose armor you have just removed. 

“I’ll not hear your apologies, wench. Everything that goes wrong is not your fault, you will learn that one day. In fact, perhaps the only consolation you will have is that you are not to blame.” He stands and stretches, offering her a half-smile. “I beg from you too often, you unman me. Name your terms of forgiveness and let me be done with it.”

Brienne looks exasperated, but then her homely face grows solemn, and she nods. “It is hard to do what is right,” she says quietly, looking almost ashamed. She, who should never be ashamed. “You think you can feel your way through it, but in the dark it is impossible to tell good men from bad men. I have learned that. You can only turn this way and that and hope that it leads you to the light.” She ducks her head. “I — I do not regret the time we have spent together, Jaime. None of it. You have been a friend to me when few others have.” She cuts off abruptly, reddening as though Jaime will laugh in her face at the admission.

He does not know what to say, so he looks at the boys below. They have set aside the shovels and are climbing the piles of snow, flinging icy handfuls at each other and giggling so hard they cannot speak. The urge seizes him to tell her about the dream beneath the weirwood, of the light she held while his died, but he holds it back. He lands on, “Arthur Dayne would have liked you.” Turning back to Brienne, he nudges her foot with his own. “I have grown to care for you, wench. Despite your numerous shortcomings.” He darts a smile at her with his eyes to take the sting out of it. “Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

Brienne looks shy, almost maidenly when she smiles. “Spar with me.”

“What?” 

“In the yard. None of the men will take up against me. Spar with me when I finish at night and I will forgive _your_ shortcomings.”

A grin leaps to Jaime’s lips, but drops just as fast. “I am but a shadow of what I used to be.” 

He cannot quite believe the admission, but Brienne only shrugs. “I will make you better. Unless you are content with nursing bruises each night.”

“You only want to batter me.”

A laugh bubbles out, lighter than silk, warmer than the winter. “Can you blame me?”

Of course not. And he will need a usable sword hand, before this is all done. There are dragons and crows circling, shadows whispering to each other, and primordial nightmares unleashed. But first, Aegon. The Young Dragon is on the march.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never see euron in fic so naturally i decided to make him the big bad even though i'm the main person invested. oops! also, i'm really a sucker for j and b starting at opposite ends of the scale concerning their feelings on what is Good and Bad and slowly making their way to meet in the middle. 
> 
> nymeria sand and varys are certainly telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, don't you worry, jaime. 
> 
> he is walking a fine line between caring and also not caring and doing it less than flawlessly.
> 
> loras's gaydar always went off for jaime so the kingslayer's whore rumors confuse him greatly. he's half right.


	9. Chapter 9

Does Cersei know her golden hair has grown back grayer, or has she convinced herself the pale strands are only sunkissed? That would be quite a leap — it is winter, and Jaime cannot remember the last time he saw his sister outside — but Cersei has made larger ones. He has known women to brush dye through their hair, wetly concealing the displeasing strands beneath, but that would mean admitting the flaw, and Cersei, well. Had she been the one to lose a hand, she would have found a way to hold a goblet with her stump. 

She has come to visit him tonight instead of holing up in Tommen’s solar as she has been these last weeks. Ser Robert Strong is somewhere with Tommen, doing what Kingsguard do, which is mostly stand and look menacing. Be sure not to lock your knees, ser, or you’ll faint. Jaime sits behind the grand desk that he uses mostly for lord’s work, as he and Brienne have taken to calling it: Don’t you have lord’s work to do, she will grumble when he can take no more and finds his way to her shoulder. Oh, yes, he’ll reply. The Warden of the West is in dire need of a homely wench taller than the Wall itself. Have you any idea where I can find such a creature? 

Cersei sits with her legs crossed on his bed. Jaime watches the gray in her hair instead of her hands, one of which flutters pink and smooth beneath her chin. “I know what you’re doing,” she says, almost mischievous.

This could refer to any number of things. “Do tell,” says Jaime. She does look lovely tonight, his sweet sister; her verdant gown makes her eyes flash like two polished stones. Does she try her best to remind him of wildfire? Jaime imagines her staring at the ceiling each night, flames choking her sleep. He turns away as though disinterested, fiddling with the blunt tourney sword laid across his desk. 

“You are going to flee the city.”

Cersei smirks at his surprise. Can she truly read his thoughts? He has entertained so many dangerous ones lately. “You needn’t look so shocked, brother, your designs are not nearly so clandestine as you think. Sneaking around those passageways, secreting away food, sparring with that beast of yours. Qyburn would be a very poor Master of Whispers to miss such things. And I a poor sister not to inquire about you.” Cersei tilts her head; do they teach all highborn women how to do that, how to tilt their heads so it looks like a sneer? “Surely the pretender’s calls for your head don’t have you frightened?”

“He has been calling for yours, too, sweet sister. Perhaps we would look nice that way: one head on either side of the Dragon Gate, what do you think? In this cold, we won’t rot for weeks.” 

“That is why I am here.” She rises from his bed and stands before him. Jaime almost feels like their father, him behind the desk and her facing it, only Cersei is the one doing the chastising. “Take me with you, Jaime. We both know the city will fall. We’ll flee to Casterly Rock and leave this life behind. I know perhaps you thought I would wish to stay behind after our...disagreements. But, Jaime,” she closes her hand around his so that they are both holding the pommel of the sword, “you know we belong together. We will go to the Rock and live as were always meant to live. Whatever happens. We are all that matters.”

He has thought about it. Aegon would happily remove her head, especially if Jaime can spirit Tommen from the city. The Young Dragon will make do with whatever Lannisters are left to him. Worse, Aegon likely cares not a lick about Cersei’s adultery or even the fact that she killed Robert Baratheon — no, she would be executed for Jaime’s crimes. If you can’t catch the Kingslayer, catch the one who fucks him. 

Fucked, Jaime reminds himself. 

He regards her for a moment, trying to decide if he will leave her to die for the second time. “If we go to the Rock,” he begins. Cersei’s eyes warm; she starts towards him. Jaime holds up his hand. “If we go to the Rock, how shall we live, exactly? As brother and sister? Or as lord and lady?”

She recoils, like wind slamming a door shut. “We have been through this. Tommen —”

“I am bringing him with me. Or would you have him executed in our place?”

“You are being ridiculous,” Cersei snaps. “If we bring him to Casterly Rock we will never be safe.”

“If we will never be safe, why not marry? The boy is a Targaryen, he brings with him a precedent —”

“I will not be scorned for the rest of my life.” 

There it is, the shame. It invariably comes back to that. Cersei would slap him across the face if he named it so, but she has forever been ashamed; her ambitions always were loftier than Jaime’s, she would never allow him to ruin them. Mother’s mercy, think what the women would say about her! Whore, brotherfucker, nasty bitch. They might even snicker behind their hands. Cersei’s skin isn’t so thick as she likes to believe, and she has spent a lifetime lifting her chin above the water seeping in from too many slits. Robert almost split her open.

Jaime looks at her, feeling a stab of pity that distracts him from the last echo of disappointment. It might kill Cersei, to know he pities her. “Fine. We will all go. You, me, Tommen. I trust you wil be slim enough to sit a horse.” Cersei slaps him, but Jaime only grins. “You have more in common with Robert than you like to think,” he says, and she slaps him again. This one hurts. When he looks up from behind his hand, the glint in her eyes reminds him of a dagger pulled at the end of a fistfight. When things are starting to get dirty. 

“We shall have the life we always dreamed of,” he calls after her. 

Cersei pauses long enough to fling back, “I do not dream of _you_.” She throws open the door — and nearly crashes into Brienne, whose fist is in the air to knock. The wench looks astonished, then appalled, and in her surprise she misses the look of absolute loathing that Cersei casts over her shoulder.

Jaime stands. The tourney sword in Brienne’s hand droops. “I’ll be just a minute,” he says.

* * *

Brienne’s face is in disarray, and she makes no attempts to right it when Jaime joins her in the training yard. The frigid night air cuts sharper than a blade, preserving puffs of breath like low-hanging fog; his stump aches in this weather. Above, the stars look sullen — they’ve shown their faces after days of falling snow, and the only people out to enjoy on them are looking everywhere but. 

He tells Brienne, come on, then, and swings his sword before she has a chance to respond. She slides past the blunted edge and aims a cut at his shoulder, which he narrowly parries. It takes all of Jaime’s strength to hold her off for even a few minutes. Once he’d gotten past the humiliation of those first few nights, the almost-disappointment in Brienne’s eyes when her sword found his throat again and again, he could admit the benefits of practicing against such an opponent. Still, he wonders, as she flicks aside a weak-wristed jab, if he will always be a disappointment to her in this state. Beneath the bitterness that coats every disarming, there is the urge to say, I’m sorry, Brienne, that I gave you a taste of honey you will never have again. If it pleases you to know: my tongue longs for it, too. 

The blade goes skittering from his hand, but he has asked forgiveness too many times. 

“Again,” says Brienne. She is not out of breath. Jaime avoids her stare, stoops to pick up his sword. “You are distracted tonight.”

“Yes, most nights you win in three minutes instead of two.”

“Your mind is somewhere else.” Brienne watches him; he knows what she wants to ask. The wariness in her eyes — it’s as though he emerged from his chambers soaked in blood.

“Say it.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Brienne.”

He has figured out how to say her name like it means something different. She flushes Lannister red and sinks teeth into her bottom lip. Her eyes are on the sword in her hand and for a moment Jaime thinks she is going to return to thrashing him. Instead: “It was strange to see your sister alone. She is never a moment without Ser Robert at her side.” And the unspoken question: why did she come alone to see you now?

“Can a brother and sister not have a moment in private?” Oh, you idiot. When Cersei is involved, everything sounds like a sin. It is not as though he can tell her what truly happened, make her privy to his schemes when already Tommen is a sore subject between them.

“Of course,” says Brienne. She is careful about her tone; it would be more believable if Jaime hadn’t seen the flash of dismay on her face when Cersei swept from the room. “You had such a flush on your face, I thought… Forgive me, Jaime, I should not have —”

This Jaime cannot take: her apologies. He cuts her off, “None of that. Nothing happened between us. Nothing has happened for…” He trails off, remembering. Lancel and Osney Kettleblack and Moonboy for all I know. Nothing has happened since I discovered that I didn’t know her at all, my other half. He laughs bitterly. “As for my face, that was Cersei’s parting gift. A simple ‘goodbye’ doesn’t sting nearly enough for her.”

Brienne blinks. “She struck you?”

Oh, Brienne. Her concern is almost gentle. “Sweet wench. I have dealt with a bit worse.” He brandishes his stump in her direction. “Stop delaying. I feel a victory in the air tonight.” This is naturally a lie, but it inspires Brienne to take a whirling cut at him, and they pick up the dance as music had been playing all the while. Swipe, parry, don’t lose your feet, Lord Lannister. He still steps nimbly as a cat, can still guess where Brienne’s darting sword will go next — all of it is in his brain; it is his arm that betrays him. His left arm cannot stand up to Brienne’s strength for long, so he first tries to stay out of reach, nipping in here and there to harass her. This fails; she is patient behind those pretty eyes, and he soon tires of circling her like a wary squire. Get in closer, then. But she is bullish and unafraid to fight dirty, despite what you might think: when Jaime slips past her guard, she clobbers the hilt of her sword against his shoulder and — “ _seven accursed hells_ ” — sends him sprawling with a kick to the stomach. 

He is outraged! Don’t you laugh, conniving wench, see my face. Brienne purses her lips as though the smile behind them is attempting an escape. Jaime kicks at her feet from the ground, but she is so solid that the _thump_ of his boot moves her not an inch. He climbs to his feet with great effect, his movements faltering halfway when he sees Brienne loop the sword in her hand, the frozen air whooshing as it flees the edge of the blade. It is a showy gesture, one Jaime can imagine her making at a tourney — the melee, yes. Stalking towards the wide-eyed curs she’d felled: _Hyle Hunt and Mark Mullendore_ _and a few others_ unlucky enough to see the sight. Or lucky enough.

Jaime struggles through the next bout, his mind elsewhere. The wench had the right of him again; she so often does. He thinks of her bared teeth when she championed him, the scar on her cheek in the firelight, her fierce embrace the night he stumbled home from Riverrun. Did he truly beg for her to stay? Why did she listen? 

The flat of his blade flashes out, rapping harder than necessary against Brienne’s off-hand. She hisses and disarms him in a burst of energy. “My lady!” he exclaims, not bothering to see where his blade has got to. “Let me see.” Before she can move, Jaime takes her hand in his and makes a show of inspecting the reddened fingers. “Stinging pain, that,” he says softly, knowing he is doing wrong but tightening the noose anyway. He has to know. Moving slowly to offer a chance for rejection, he lifts her hand to his mouth and presses her fingertips to his lips. Brienne shudders at the touch; not, he thinks, with revulsion. 

He expected her hand to be cold, but no, it nearly pulses with heat. Her fingertips are rough, chapped from a lifetime spent gripping the hilt of a sword. You can imagine how they might feel elsewhere. Not soft: they would chafe, just a little. Just enough. 

Jaime steps back. The stars hide their faces at his impropriety. No matter, he’s never been good at that. “Well, Brienne,” he says, because it is all that comes to mind and he hates a long silence. She is looking at him like she is the Maiden herself and he some soil-blackened farm boy who has just sung for her a raunchy drinking song and asked, what do you think of it? Of course, both of them knowing that what he really wants to know is: what do you think of me?

Brienne balls her hand into a fist; Jaime thinks she is going to take a swing at him, but she only looks at it, as though something is trapped inside. Quietly: “We’ll dance on the morrow, then?”

His shoulders sag with relief. “So long as the music plays for us.” 

* * *

Next day, Qyburn produces two men from Sharp Point bearing news that by all rights should see them laughed out of the Keep: dragons, they say. Real ones, not the silver-haired kind, although they come bearing news of those, too. Daenerys Targaryen, the men almost whisper, the daughter of the Mad King is sailing on Dragonstone, borne by Euron Greyjoy’s Iron Fleet, which has departed from Oldtown. Merchant ships had spied them sailing from Pentos, trailed by flying beasts that cast great, rippling shadows on the sea below. 

“And on the ships?” Tommen seems afraid to ask, but he must. The court is watching. 

The men are equally hesitant to answer. “Thousands, Your Grace,” says the boldest of them. “Unsullied from Astapor, the finest foot in the world if the stories can be believed. And Dothraki. They bellowed in some foul language at any of our ships that came too close. We could hear their horses screaming belowdecks.”

“The dragons.” Mace Tyrell sits forward. “How large were they?”

“There are three of them, my lord Hand. Their wings are like sails. They seemed uninterested in our small ships, but…” The bolder man shudders. “When they flew overhead one could feel the air vibrate with the size of them. They are hot, even from above. The water hissed beneath their wings. It was as though the sun swooped too close to the sea.” 

“What does the Dragon Queen want?” someone calls.

“Is it not obvious?” asks Nymeria Sand. Her voice could shear the hair off your arm. “She wants her father’s throne. Perhaps she will join Aegon in knocking down our doors.”

Fear soughs through the court. Jaime casts a glance at Brienne. “Fishermen have been known to tell tales,” she murmurs, sounding unconvinced by her own words.

“We have seen a dead woman walking,” Jaime reminds her. And told no one, knowing we wouldn’t be believed. Still: if the dead can walk, why should dragons not fly once again?

Tommen puts up one tubby hand for silence. He pushes the crown further up his forehead. Looking at Mace Tyrell, he says, “Is the city going to fall?” Jaime closes his eyes. It is not the sort of question the court should hear its king ask. He can imagine two silver-haired dragons laughing to themselves: the usurper king is a frightened boy, did you hear?

“We are well-defended,” says Mace Tyrell loudly, which is mostly true. King’s Landing once again seethes with preparations for war: scorpions arranged just so, Gold Cloaks drilling commoners in the street, destriers’ iron-shod hooves kicking down stable doors. The problem remains: it won’t be enough. Not if Aegon alone erupts through the Kingswood (he is perhaps a week away, say the scouts), and especially not if Daenerys Targaryen swoops down from the opposite side on the back of a dragon. 

Who knows what alliances these Targaryen claimants may form between themselves; it matters not. One or the other will take Tommen’s head. It is almost time to go.

* * *

Later, Brienne stands outside Tommen’s solar while Jaime sups with the boy. Tommen is cowed; Cersei dealt him the tongue-lashing that none of his Small Council had the stones to impart upon their king. Father would likely have cuffed Tommen himself if he still lived. It is the kind of upbringing you get when you are meant for greater things. Or when you are meant for nothing at all, Jaime reflects, thinking of Tyrion. Perhaps fathers just enjoy cuffing their sons. 

“Kings show no fear,” he says, gently as he knows how. Soon enough it will no longer matter.

“I know,” says Tommen. The afternoon sun splashes yellow across his round face, giving him the glowing look of a babe. “But it was a true question, Uncle. If I’m king, I should know if the city is going to fall.” 

“What does your Council tell you?”

“All different things.” Tommen frowns at the roast chicken on his plate. “Even though they don’t talk to me much anymore. Mace Tyrell says the High Sparrow will turn everyone against us if he thinks Aegon will be kind to him. Harys Swyft says the ladies should leave the city but Nymeria Sand told him there’s nowhere to go.”

“She is right in that,” Jaime admits. The sight of Nymeria still threatens to cloud his eyes with red. He has told no one of Myrcella’s death. “A few lords and ladies could leave the city,” he says carefully. “If they were careful and went about it at the right moment.”

“You and Mother should leave,” says Tommen, looking up. “You could sneak away to Casterly Rock and be safe there. I’ve heard that Aegon wants — he wants your head, Uncle. And the Dragon Queen, she must be angry that you..”

“Murdered her father? Yes, I imagine she nurses a grudge.” Jaime thumps the table with one hand, starling a cat from Tommen’s lap. “Listen to me, Tommen: I am not leaving you here. Do you understand me? Your mother and I” — he almost winces at the phrasing of it — “will never leave you behind for the block.”

Tommen looks over Jaime’s shoulder; Brienne is in the doorway beneath a shag of straw-colored hair. “I heard a noise,” she says, glancing between them.

“It was only me and my temper, my lady. It seems I cannot control myself around kings.” Brienne squints — did she hear Jaime jape about murdering his own son, or did he find decency when he stared into the pisspot this morning? 

“If you need me,” Brienne says to Tommen, gesturing at the door. 

Jaime imagines, idly, Brienne throwing open the door on yet another of his misdeeds. At least he would get to look down the length of her sword before it opened his throat. 

“Did you really kill a king, Uncle Jaime?”

Father, thinks Jaime. At least ask it of your father. “That I did the deed was hardly a question, Your Grace. Ned Stark walked the length of your very throne room and found me gazing at the Mad King’s body. I got off the Iron Throne once Lord Stark entered, Truth be told, I simply wanted to see who would claim it.”

“Margaery said —” Tommen cuts himself off as though Cersei is here to catch him saying that poisonous name. “Margaery said you couldn’t be trusted on the Kingsguard because of what you did.”

“She is far from the only one to hold that particular opinion.” He grits his teeth at the image of the little queen whispering into Tommen’s ear. She is just another current pulling the king in her direction. “What do you think?”

“The Mad King was evil, everyone says so. Even his name.” Tommen cocks his head at Jaime. “I don’t think you would hurt me, and you never hurt my father.” Robert. Only because he never had half a chance. “And Lady Brienne says you’re honorable.” Tommen perks up; so does Jaime. “She is wonderful, isn’t she? She’s like a knight from the old stories when she uses her sword. She said she would never let anyone harm me.”

“I am certain she wouldn’t.” Jaime swallows a swill of unworthiness. Brienne, whom he dragged away from her duty, is a better protector for Tommen than Jaime ever will be.

He stands: “Your Grace.” 

“I will see you tonight,” says Brienne when he excuses himself. A woman nearby is scrubbing the floors; she raises an eyebrow at Jaime. 

“Are you filling Tommen’s head with tales about me?”

Brienne looks surprised. “Good ones.”

“That is why they are called tales.” Jaime passes a hand over his face. In a low voice he says, “What was it you said about turning towards the light, Brienne? We can only feel our way towards it?” He forces a smile. “What if I’ve only one hand to stretch out?”

“I don’t know.” Brienne cannot quite hold his eyes; he sees his own uncertainty reflected in hers before she looks away. Her ruined cheek is bared to him. “I think sometimes, it must take a whole village of people to make a good man. Or woman. People to help her when she doesn’t know which way to turn. I don’t know what that means for those who are meant to be alone.”

What do they matter to you? thinks Jaime. “Tell the lad about the bear. That’s a fine one.” Something occurs to him. “I never told you — the dream I had the night before I turned my party back. The two of us were left in the dark, only a pair of flaming swords to see by. Naked as our name days.” He grins at the color in Brienne’s cheeks. The serving woman will have a tale to spread if she is listening. “I held my sword in my hand, my good hand. I held it even when my fire went out and left only yours to hold back the darkness."

“Your good hand?” asks Brienne, as though this is the only thing he’s said of note.

“I always have two hands in my dreams.”

Brienne contemplates that. “In mine, you only have the one.” 

Jaime knows, then. He knows the name of the creature buried in his chest. And he knows that he cannot leave her behind. 

* * *

A week cold enough to freeze the spit on your tongue. Then: Aegon. You can see the Young Dragon’s forces felling the Kingswood from the walls of the Keep, burning the wood for their campfires. Jaime squints for a glimpse of silver hair, but spies only golden tents. Aegon has arrived first, beating out his aunt to the north. His is the better claim, of course, being of the male line. Jaime wonders if Daenerys Targaryen believes him to be true or a pretender. If she believes the former, that would be a revealing test: do you want the throne because it belongs to you, Dragon Queen, or do you simply want it? 

The siege of King’s Landing is beginning. Aegon’s scouts ride just out of arrows’ range, inspecting each of the seven mighty gates. Smallfolk clamor to be let in, but Mace Tyrell chokes even the smallest movements in and out of the city. Each night, the distant screams of war horses keep Jaime’s eyes open. The Gold Cloaks, the Tyrells, the small Lannister foot: they are as ready as they can be. 

So is Jaime. He can wait no longer; Tommen must leave the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the cersei/brienne dream contrast is half the reason i wrote this entire behemoth
> 
> also, i know this is getting a bit plot-heavy, so feel free to ask any clarifying questions


	10. Chapter 10

When the time comes, he fetches Cersei first. She is dressed as plainly as she can manage, dark furs and sturdy boots that certainly do not belong to her. Jaime wears something similar, only his furs conceal armor beneath. 

It is time because Aegon is here and now the fighting begins. Jaime has put off their escape as long as possible despite Varys’s urging. It is unlike him, all this deliberation, but he wants to be right, and he wants to know he is right. A part of him dwells on Brienne’s point: Tommen will never be safe in exile. Aegon will always have a man or several after his head. But what is the other option? Stay, watch the city fall, bow for the headsman, thankful only that he won’t live to see Tommen’s head roll? No, that he could never stomach. And he likes his head where it is. 

Ser Robert Strong they leave standing outside Cersei’s chambers; Jaime flatly refused to bring along the monstrosity. Stay, dog, he thinks, hustling Cersei away. Once out of sight, he tugs at her sleeve and hands her a dagger against his better judgment. Cersei recoils as though he has presented her with a steaming shit. “No,” she says. 

Jaime shrugs. “You needn’t use it. Just don’t say I left you unprotected.” 

He knows who will be standing outside Tommen’s chambers: evening is fading fast, and Brienne will be waiting for Ser Robert to come to relieve her. Perhaps her mind is on the night ahead, on what new ways she can invent to thrash Jaime in the yard, or how the fire in her chambers later will chase the day’s chill from her fingertips. Cersei doesn’t know, but Jaime has deliberately picked a day that Brienne is on this watch — the reason Cersei doesn’t know this is because she also does not know that Brienne is coming with them. At least, Jaime hopes she is coming with them. 

He pauses in surprise, then, to see both Brienne and Meryn Trant standing outside Tommen’s solar. Cersei shoots him a glare; she knows only one Kingsguard is usual. There is nothing for it, however. Jaime strolls up to the two of them. “Evening, ser. My lady. If it pleases His Grace, his mother and I would like a word.”

The mistake he makes is looking at Brienne: her eyes meet his, and she understands as instantly as though Jaime has written his intentions on his forehead. He sees her tense, just a bit. 

Meryn Trant squints. “Ser Loras and Queen Margaery are in there. The queen said nothing about visitors.” Margaery. That explains Trant’s presence.

“I’m his mother,” says Cersei; she can sound quite sweet when she wants to. “I mean to comfort my son on this night — haven’t you seen how frightened he looks lately, ser?” 

The whole Keep has seen it. Tommen is white as a bone and tugging at his blonde hair, pulling out thin golden strands that litter the floor around the Iron Throne. The siege of King’s Landing is about to begin, and the boy king falls asleep each night wondering if it hurts when the headsman swings his sword. 

Trant shrugs, and makes to open the door. 

“ _No_ ,” blurts Brienne. Her hand is on Oathkeeper. “Jaime, stop this now. Tommen is your king, how could you —”

“Not for much longer.”

“How could he what?” Trant’s beady eyes dart between them.

Cersei hisses: “You told _her_?” 

“Step aside, Ser Meryn,” says Jaime. He keeps his voice deliberately calm, smooth. You are the Lion of Lannister, remember. “No use making this harder than need be.”

“Fuck off, Kingslayer.” He must be feeling bold to say the name to Jaime’s face. “What have you done that’s got your whore so red in the face?” 

Ah, thinks Jaime. Ser Meryn Trant. He recalls how the man beat Sansa Stark at Joffrey’s behest. This one will not weigh heavily on his shoulders. Widow’s Wail sounds gleeful as he whisks it from its scabbard, wrenches Trant’s arm in the air, and buries the blade in the weak point on his underarm. The air flees Trant’s lungs in a huff; Jaime steps back and lowers the corpse gently to the ground. “Messy, that,” he sighs. In Kingsguard whites, everyone can see you bleed.

Inside Tommen’s solar, there comes a twinkling laugh. Jaime feels Cersei’s eyes on him and knows what she wants him to do next. Sweet sister, I would fall on my sword before that. It doesn’t matter, anyway, what he would or wouldn’t do, for Brienne’s sword is out and under his chin. A mottled, ugly flush is about her face, but her eyes are calm as Jaime’s voice; he wonders if she too is pretending.

Oathkeeper is steady in her hands.

“Would you do it, Brienne?” Jaime asks. Really, he is curious. He tilts his head as insolently as he can, as though a knight of the Kingsguard is not cooling at his feet. “Forgive me, but I doubt if you would. Though I admit, I could not blame you.”

“Put away your sword,” Cersei says to her, “lest you meet the same end as this one.”

Brienne does not look at Cersei, but her eyes echo Jaime’s question back at him: would you do it, my lord?

Jaime is closest to the door, but cannot open it before Brienne impales him, if she decides that is the end he deserves. So he does the next best thing: he knocks.

The voices quiet, then the door swings open. Jaime could almost laugh at Margaery’s face — until she sees Meryn Trant emptying on the ground and opens her mouth to scream. He ducks away from the point of Brienne’s sword and pushes into the room, stump arm pinning Margaery to his chest while he clamps his sword arm across her mouth. She is thorny; she finds his exposed hand and bites it. Jaime curses but keeps his hold on her. “The door,” he shouts at Cersei. 

Everyone is shouting now: Brienne standing over Tommen in one corner and Tommen at her feet, wailing; Cersei shrieking at Margaery to be quiet; Loras by the window unable to rise in any way but in volume. Cersei slams the door shut and bolts the lock, but it will not be long before someone hears the din and spies the dead Kingsguard outside the king’s solar. “There will be men along any minute, now,” Jaime rings out, “so let me tell all of you what will happen. Cersei,” he jerks his head at a glossy cedar chest by Tommen’s bedside. “Shove that out of the way. There is a loose stone slab beneath. We’ll leave from there. Brienne —” he shoves his heart aside, for now — “you are going to step aside and let Tommen come to me, elsewise his darling queen will join Meryn Trant.”

Tommen gasps. “Uncle, _please_.” Margaery kicks in Jaime's arms, shrilling something about her father that Jaime cuts off by pressing Widow’s Wail just so against her throat. She is only a girl; he would not do it. He does not think he would do it. 

“Tommen,” he says, hearing his own father and hating himself for it, “this is for your own good. Come here and I swear to you no one else will get hurt.”

Loras spits _traitor_ at his feet and Margaery’s fingers claw uselessly against his armor and Cersei tells him that she has found the secret passage, but Jaime can only hear the tirade coming from Brienne’s eyes: two accusing shards of ice that he can feel as acutely as though she buried them beneath his skin. But what can he do? Lannisters help Lannisters, and no one alive is more thoroughly a Lannister than Tommen. And he is my son. This is the last chance I have.

He wonders if Brienne will understand; he wonders if she will forgive. Again. 

Tommen comes haltingly from beneath Brienne’s shadow, and she does not move to stop him. Jaime ushers him over to Cersei. A stillness settles, then shatters at a shout in the hall. 

“We must leave,” says Cersei.

“I know. But they have to come with us.”

“ _No_.”

“Like hells,” says Loras.

“It probably will be,” Jaime agrees. He’s no intention of bringing Loras or Margaery to Casterly Rock, but they cannot remain here, where they will point whomever follows into the passageways after the king. He will leave the Tyrells in the tunnels someplace, where they can shout loudly enough that they’ll be found. Eventually. 

He looks at Brienne and blinks, startled at the misery written across her face. Feet are pounding in the hallways. Another king lost to her, another child eluding her grasp. What choice has he left her? Another oath I will break on her behalf, he thinks, stricken at himself, for he knows what Brienne will do. He knows because she is _better_ , and better people, despite themselves, will often do the wrong things for the right reasons. Things like helping the Kingslayer kidnap the king who is really his nephew who is really his son.

“You must come with us,” he says, allowing his shame creeping into the light, for her.

Brienne closes her eyes; for once, it brings him relief. “I would have come anyway. None of you can protect him.”

“I know. And, Brienne...I am sorry.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she says, although he did not ask for it. She sounds heavy, as though they are back in the Riverlands and he is chained to her once again. 

Margaery is still pinned to his chest. Cersei nudges a trembling, compliant Tommen into the passage. Jaime found this one at Varys’s direction; Brienne will not recognize the slippery tunnel that leads to this room. He jerks his head at Loras, still confined to his seat by the window. “You’ll have to carry him, Brienne. Tie his hands.” 

“Never,” snaps Loras, but he is weak from pain and infection and can do little but curse as Brienne hoists him like a stillborn calf over her shoulder. They follow Tommen down, Brienne not sparing even a glance to where Cersei crouches, eyes pinned to Margaery.

Someone pounds on the door, shouting for Tommen. They all start, and Margaery slides from Jaime’s grasp and stumbles just out of reach. She is beautiful even now, the Rose Queen, even with cunning eyes and a sneering pink mouth. “I will never go with you,” she cries, and yells to the rescuers that the Kingslayer and his whores are stealing Tommen and her brother. 

Brienne calls Jaime’s name urgently from below.

“You think you’ll be safe at the Rock?” asks Margaery. “You’ll bring war to the West. The smallfolk will turn on you.” Her flowing green sleeves don’t remind him of anything, but he thinks they should: a queen should look like something more than she is. But Margaery is only a queen, and queens are only soft sacks of meat like the rest of us. When Cersei’s dagger finds her stomach, the Rose Queen looks like nothing more than a shocked young girl. 

Jaime hears his second death rattle of the day.

There is no time for him to do anything but snatch Cersei away from Margaery’s spreading blood and throw her down with the rest. The door is splintering. He casts one look back at Margaery’s hands clamped over her stomach before hauling the chest over his head and pushing the stone back in place.  
  


Mayhem in the tunnels: Tommen crying, Loras screaming, Brienne deathly, furiously silent. Jaime cannot even look at Cersei as he sheathes Widow’s Wail.

“Let’s go,” he says, and pushes past them all, unceremoniously picking up Tommen and forging ahead. They need to make good time now; it will not be long before the secret entrance is discovered, and they must be away from the city walls by then. 

Loras curses Cersei for a murderer; everyone can see the blood spattering her furs. They will have heard Margaery’s gasp. Tommen buries his face in Jaime’s shoulder and sobs. He should tell his son to settle, but he hasn’t the heart. Two dead already, and this scheme was meant to save people, he thinks bitterly. You’ve done it now, Kingslayer. 

“Is she really dead?” whispers Tommen.

“Probably.” Jaime uses his foot to push aside a rusted grate; he holds it open while Brienne trudges past with a limp Loras. 

“I don’t understand. Why would Mother hurt her?”

Jaime glances at Cersei, whose silence cannot conceal her glee at having triumphed over her usurper. If Cersei cannot be the queen, no one can. Perhaps that was Margaery Tyrell’s final realization. 

He speeds ahead of the others. “I don’t know, Tommen. But listen to me: you must forget it. I’m sorry. I am. But the life that awaits you — us — spares no room for grief. You can carry it like a seed in your heart, but never dwell on it. There is only the next thing.” Jaime is not certain if he believes his own words: should a boy not grieve his friend? Should a man not grieve his wife? He remembers his trial, Brienne slumping to the dirt, her blood turning the dirt into mud — he would have mourned forever. But Tommen is only a boy, and boys know how to forget. 

“We are going to Casterly Rock,” he says. “Do you remember when you asked me to visit?” At that horrid supper that started so much of this. “We shall live where Lannisters are meant to live — no more being kings and queens. You’ll like that, will you not?” Tommen doesn’t answer. Fine. You’ll like it a piece better than having your head removed.

The tunnels are narrow and winding, abrupt inclines and curves emerging just at the end of Jaime’s vision. They follow the unseen structure of the Keep around them. Had he not walked this route half a hundred times in preparation, he would be hopelessly lost; as it is, he has to concentrate to keep the party moving at a clip without taking a wrong turn. Gods, wouldn’t that be something — slipping through the wrong entryway to find themselves face-to-face with Mace Tyrell’s ever-reddening jowls. 

He wishes he could speak to Brienne, but with Loras Tyrell slung over her shoulder and Cersei following behind, what could he say but platitudes? It wasn’t a lie, what he said to her: he had known she would come. Not for him, however he might wish it, but for Tommen, who is as innocent as her lost Stark girls; Tommen, who needs a proper sword to protect him. 

I could never leave you behind, thinks Jaime. I have proven that, if only to myself. 

Brienne stops abruptly at his side. Has she read his thoughts? No: “Did you hear that?”

He has been lost in his own mind. “Not a thing.”

“I heard it, too,” says Cersei — there must truly be a noise for her to agree with Brienne. 

“Just ahead.” Brienne puts Loras down, hand drifting to her sword. 

“They are my father’s men,” says Loras, struggling with the rope around his wrists. “They’ll have all your heads, starting with —”

“Quiet, pup.” Jaime senses the presence ahead now, just around a bend at the end of the hall. He lowers Tommen to the ground and nudges him behind Cersei. His sister’s eyes are narrow as a cat’s; perhaps she is wishing she hadn’t left her dagger embedded in Margaery Tyrell’s stomach. Jaime gestures with his chin and follows a pace behind Brienne, stepping lightly towards the bend. Widow’s Wail is in his hand as Oathkeeper is in Brienne's, red steel glistening against the grey. 

They are almost at the end of the hall when Tommen’s shrill voice sounds from behind them. “Uncle! Lady Brienne!”

Jaime whirls, spies the flash of steel, and hurtles back the way they came. Brienne outpaces him, shouting, but Nymeria Sand waits for them patiently, five Dornishmen at her back and a blade of a smile on her lips. She stands behind Tommen and Cersei, Dornish spears bristling at their throats. 

“I knew you were a scheming whore,” says Cersei, unaware of the proper etiquette for when one has a spear at her throat. “I said it from the moment you stepped foot in this court.” 

“Curious that every woman in opposition to Cersei Lannister is a lying whore,” says Nymeria. “For I _am_ in opposition to you, and I always have been. You see, in Dorne, Elia Martell’s tragedy spans generations. It always made me wonder: who should we spare when the time comes? Every aging farmer and soft-skinned child in Dorne knows what the Lannisters did to Elia and her children. Just as they will soon know what I have done to you.” She pauses and turns her eyes on Jaime. “You are late, Lord Lannister. And you’ve brought company. A rose and…” She smiles at Brienne. “Well, they have all sorts of names for you.”

“Nasty thing, when plans go awry,” drawls Jaime. “I suppose you didn’t plan on the wench being here. Quite talented with a sword, she is. Though I’m sure she will make it known to you that she is no Lannister like the rest of us.”

Nymeria shrugs. “If they lay with lions…”

“ _Move_ ,” shouts Jaime. He wrenches Tommen backward with his golden hand, thrusting the boy stumbling behind him even as Brienne does the same with Cersei. The Dornish spears dart forward. With no shield, Jaime can only duck and throw himself at his attackers’ feet, kicking out wildly. One man stumbles, another’s spear misses Jaime’s head by inches. He hears Cersei scream at Tommen to run and Nymeria tell her men to save Jaime’s head for her pleasure. 

The passage is too narrow to fight properly. Jaime scrambles to his feet and grabs the nearest Dornishman’s spear, wrestling it from his arms and knocking him down with a blow to the head. He shoves the spear at Loras, who’s pulled himself to his feet.

Brienne, the great bulky, towering wench, blocks half the passageway, roaring at the Dornish to try her. They falter, if only for a moment, and Brienne charges, flinging Nymeria Sand to the side, Oathkeeper flickering like a viper. Six of them and one of her. No, two of us. Jaime leaps into battle beside her, slipping to the side of one spear and kicking its owner into the path of Brienne’s sword. Those nights spent sparring keep him alive, even if he has to think consciously: cut, cut, parry, step forward.

He discovers quickly that his left hand is nigh useless in true combat, not deft enough to dance as it must in this narrow passageway. A spear nips past his guard and catches him clean in the stomach; if not for his armor, he would be skewered like fresh trout. As it is, his lungs gasp for a breath that isn’t there and he cracks his head against the wall.

“ _Jaime_.” Brienne sweeps him behind her. He is stunned, woozy, and thinks for a red-tinged moment that he is witnessing the Warrior returned. His god since boyhood, that’s what he told the Elder Brother while he waited for her to wake. Surely if the Warrior exists she would look something like this: sword wet to the hilt, white Kingsguard armor spotted scarlet with the enemies of the crown. Brienne breaks the last man’s spear over her knee and watches him run. That’s the best time to kill them, Jaime had informed her so long ago. 

Corpses crowd Brienne’s feet; one of them, slender, rises and buries a dagger in a gap in Brienne’s armor. Jaime shouts, but Brienne hardly flinches, pinning Nymeria Sand to the wall with her forearm. “Tommen is innocent,” she says between heaving breaths. “His death would not have brought you peace.”

Nymeria whispers, “It would have brought me something.”

Oathkeeper slides almost gently between her ribs.

All is quiet. Brienne sheathes her sword and hefts Jaime to his feet; he does not remember falling. Loras is somewhere down the hall. “Do I need to carry both of you?” she asks.

Her hair is stuck to the pink flush of her face. “You look like a woman,” Jaime informs her. 

Brienne shakes her head and scoops up Loras, who does not protest, and if she staggers, Jaime is too dizzy to comment. They find Cersei and Tommen huddled just out of sight, shaking like cowed dogs. “Thank the wench for your lives,” Jaime says, and leads them on.

* * *

“You’re late,” says the man beside Blackwater Rush. “Aegon’s scouts are flitting about. I almost left.” 

The man is of a height with Varys, but bearded and smelling of manure. In a better mood, Jaime might tug on his beard to see if this really is the Spider or just one of his birds, but he is woozy and tired and kidnapping a king.

There are four horses — see how well I know you, wench? — each burdened with the supplies Jaime has been hoarding for weeks now. Cersei and Brienne climb atop one each, while Jaime sits Tommen in the saddle and deposits an untied Loras behind him. The boy will have to come with them to Casterly Rock; Jaime will not leave him prone in those tunnels when more Dornishmen come calling for Nymeria Sand. He kicks his own horse into a trot and they set off silently down the river, King’s Landing a fading shadow behind them. 

Jaime keeps them well off the Gold Road; Tommen’s disappearance will be the talk of the Crownlands already, and the way to the Rock will surely be trafficked by bounty hunters and servants of the crown alike. Whomever the crown may be, now. For his part, Tommen is mute and staring, avoiding Jaime’s eyes, not even looking up when his horse’s gait causes Loras to cry out in pain.

How the bloody hells did Nymeria Sand find them? You’re late, Lord Lannister, she had said. Varys is Jaime’s guess. Perhaps he had needed Nymeria’s help to secure Dorne for Aegon; perhaps Dorne’s price was all the Lannister heads it could get. Kingslayer, you fool. Jaime’s phantom fingers twinge. If he ever sees the thrice-damned eunuch again… 

There is an outcropping of rock a little ways off the river; Jaime finds it in the darkness only as a looming presence in the corner of his eye. It is too dark to make a shelter, too wet to make a fire. When Jaime lowers Tommen from his horse, the boy sinks nearly up to his waist in snow. They set about clearing brush and rubble from a crevasse just narrow enough for a few bodies to hunker down for the night. 

It will be a miserable one, Jaime thinks, and decides to embrace it. He turns to Tommen: “You are king no more, lad. Apologies if you had an attachment to that ghastly chair. It may comfort you to know that it never truly belonged to you anyway.” Brienne looks up. Cersei stiffens, her eyes blazing a warning in Jaime’s direction. He ignores her. “You’re mine, Tommen. A Lannister twice over. Whatever king’s blood Robert Baratheon might have had, it doesn’t run in your veins.”

Loras hisses in disgust. Tommen’s eyes widen, looking between Jaime and Cersei. “Uncle?” he says. “But you...I don’t understand."

“Father,” Jaime corrects. “You needn’t call me that if you do not wish it, but know that it is the truth.” Should he say something of Myrcella? No, fool, look at Cersei, her rage would burn the forest around us. 

“Father,” Tommen whispers, trying it out. “I never liked being the king much.”

Relief thaws Jaime’s chest. He did right, the proof is in Tommen’s brimming green eyes. And if Cersei hates him for it, well. Jaime knows what it is to look in the mirror and hate what you see.

Brienne clears her throat. “I suppose I am no longer Kingsguard.” She kneels before the boy who was once king. “I pledged to protect you to my final breath, Tommen, and I intend to honor that pledge. King or not.”

“Thank you, my lady.” Tommen looks solemn. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“How fortunate for all of us that she follows your accursed father to every corner of Westeros,” mutters Cersei. 

“I followed her first.” Jaime makes himself smile. Brienne is stripping away her Kingsguard armor piece by red-speckled piece — without his help this time. He had thought she would be angry with him, but perhaps she too has seen the relief in Tommen’s face, seen the true danger in Nymeria Sand’s eyes. Gods, the way she wields that sword!

Cersei says something else, and Loras spits in her direction, but Jaime is no longer listening. 

“Brienne,” he interrupts, blithe, “this has gone on quite long enough. When we get to Casterly Rock, I will find a man to knight you.”

Brienne huffs an amused breath, then sucks it back in at his expression. Her brow furrows. “No.”

He raises his eyebrows. “What stain on your honor can you possibly invent this time? You have defended your king to the last — he is king no longer. No oath is broken. You have saved all our lives. Come now, don’t fight me on this of all things.”

“I said no, Jaime,” Brienne repeats. He opens his mouth to berate her for a stubborn mule of a wench, but she cuts him off. “Not another man. I would rather it was you.”

Jaime’s breath stutters, tongue tripping on a hundred protests, a hundred reasons why it should be anybody but him. Instead, he swallows. “Here?”

“Have you somewhere better?” 

Yes, a Great Hall, filled with cheering lords and ladies tossing petals at your feet, and the king himself drawing the sword, and an uproarious feast to follow. Widow’s Wail only whispers as he pulls it from its scabbard.

“Kneel, then, and allow me to do what should have been done long ago. And, Brienne,” he adds, thumbing the pommel in his hand, “look at me.”

Brienne drops to her knees, eyes never leaving his. Good, he thinks. Good, don’t look away, else I won’t be able to do it. If their company is watching, if they are saying anything at all, Jaime cannot hear them. His arm comes straight out and rests the blade on her shoulder. Widow’s Wail is sharp. When Arthur Dayne did this for him all those years ago, Dawn sliced through Jaime’s thin tunic to the skin beneath; he does the same for Brienne — he will not deny her the blood of knighthood. He opens his mouth and, in a fit of absurd terror, thinks he will not remember the words. They leave his lips all the same. 

“In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.” Brienne’s mouth quivers, or perhaps that is his own hand. She does not look away. 

“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.” No living soul could uphold that oath better than Brienne.

“In the name of the Mother...” Here Jaime’s voice wavers — of all the oaths, he has the least right to utter this one. But Brienne holds his eyes, inclines her head slightly. Go on. He breathes, “I charge you to defend the innocent.”

Does she think on her great deeds while he speaks? You would not know it by looking at her face, which trembles slightly at every word as if she is afraid he will stop. This is no dream, he tries to say without saying it. By the time he reaches the Stranger, his hand is steady, but his heart pounds thunderously in his ears.

“Arise, Brienne of Tarth: a knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” 

She does, eyes flashing with tears unshed. Jaime steps back, sheaths Widow’s Wail. Silence hangs thick between them until he rasps, “You honor me, Ser Brienne. Would that Barristan Selmy or Arthur Dayne—”

“You stupid man,” Brienne whispers, and embraces him. 

He forgets that other eyes are watching them; he forgets everything but the strength of her arms and her hand on the back of his neck. “Ser Brienne of Tarth,” he murmurs, hoisting her off the ground just a bit. She smiles into his ear; it makes no sound, but he hears it clearly as a bell and thinks, I would do anything to hear that again and again. 

When they part, Cersei is staring. Maybe she never really believed her own paranoia until this moment. Dizziness makes him bold and he says, so only she can hear, “Sweet sister, you must be so pleased that you have been proven right.” She wants to slap him, he can see it in the quivering of her fingers, but instead she turns and drags Tommen into the cave. 

The night sky sighs; snow begins to fall. Loras refuses to sleep beside the woman who murdered his sister — fair enough, thinks Jaime — so he huddles beneath a fur across the clearing. Jaime doubts if he is actually sleeping. Gods know he didn’t sleep properly for a month after the Brotherhood murdered his family. He remembers the wolves unraveling Daven’s stomach and the open throats of Piper and Peck. He would have knighted them, too. one day.

Brienne is beside him, wrapping the arm that Nymeria Sand stabbed. Jaime would help, but he does not trust himself. If he found her beautiful in that tunnel: bloody and screaming and violent, what does he find her now? What is any woman but beautiful when she sits beside you in the snow?

“You are a knight, now, like in one of your beloved songs,” he tells her. “I can think of many ballads about maidens and knights, but none about those who were both. Perhaps I ought to write a verse.”

“Gods spare us that,” mutters Brienne. 

Jaime laughs. “Perhaps it is simply that the knights in the songs are not maidens. We shall have to work on that in your case, ser.” We. He shocks himself.

Brienne shoves at him, but it nearly turns into another embrace. 

A lump forms in Jaime’s throat. “If it means anything, and I’m certain it doesn’t: I am proud of you. Wench. Brienne. The bards will sing songs of you if I have to write them myself.”

“That means more than you know.” Brienne looks down, then collects herself and meets his eyes. “Perhaps we — perhaps neither one of us is so unworthy as we think.”

The snow melts on Jaime’s cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this ! was a beast to churn out. i suck at writing action and like..movement in general lol so i'm not sure why i did this to myself. anyway! we're off to casterly rock with a terrible disaster family in tow.


	11. Chapter 11

Tommen’s crown is wrought of gold, delicate fingers twisting into antlers that ringed the boy’s blond head like thorns, once. They bury it in the snow in sight of Casterly Rock. Come summer, it will emerge alone in a damp spot on the ground: a bastard crown, a tribute to the bastard king. Jaime thinks it fitting to leave it here in the shade of the Lannisters’ ancestral home; surely his clever, golden-haired forbears would laugh to see how he winkled the king out from under Aegon’s nose. 

The Rock looms before them. Jaime has never been here without his father. His horse whickers nervously, sensing the great presence towering above her head. Thrice as tall as the Wall, he tells Brienne, repeating Tywin's well-worn words. Two leagues long. They say it looks like a crouching lion in the proper light, but I always saw a squirrel. He points out the smoke of Lannisport just to the south, and the Sunset Sea beyond. This time of day, the dying sun spits its last golden breaths onto the icy harbor and the Rock above. The crowning ringfort spills down the side of the Rock, outposts and guardhouses and stairways embedded in the stone, frowning at you as if scorning the audacity of your approach.

At the base, sprawled around the great gate known as the Lion's Mouth, is a grey-brown puddle of people, livestock, and rickety shacks: the Riverlanders to whom he'd offered Lannister hospitality after Garlan Tyrell ousted them from Riverrun. There aren't many of them — from here, Jaime estimates three thousand — but his chest warms a bit knowing he's helped the wretched lot.

“The humble seat of House Lannister,” he says for effect. Loras looks vaguely ill; the riding has probably worsened his leg. At Jaime’s shoulder, Brienne gazes at the sea. She must miss her island, he thinks. The sea there is a cool, tranquil blue; here at the Rock our waters are molten. 

He leads them on towards the yawning Lion’s Mouth. Damion has done well keeping the place organized: guards shout for them to halt a quarter-mile away from the cavern entrance. Their jaws fall agape at the sight of Jaime and Cersei. Jaime supposes word of their disappearances will have torn across the Seven Kingdoms by now, a week after their escape. The guards are nervous; if this goes wrong, someone somewhere will have their heads. But are they to deny the Warden of the West his own castle? Jaime rides into Casterly Rock with his head high, and when the servants greet him as Lord Lannister, he grins, and none of them know that he is laughing at himself.

* * *

Five of our best men, he orders Damion Lannister. That is who will shadow every step that Tommen takes inside Casterly Rock. They have sent out ravens renouncing the kingship in Tommen’s name — Tommen Waters, for the once-king is a bastard and swears to never seek the Iron Throne so long as Aegon and his descendants hold it. Time will tell if it is enough.

It is Damion who tells Jaime that King’s Landing belongs to Aegon Targaryen, now. The Young Dragon took the city without ever raising a sword: the Tyrells surrendered not two days after Tommen’s disappearance. Mace Tyrell has no room to bargain. Margaery is dead. Loras cannot return; he would say too much. All that the Hand — “The old Hand, not Connington,” says Damion — can do is claim he never much cared for the Lannisters anyhow. 

“I’m sure Mace will find that terribly difficult,” says Jaime. He looks across his castellan’s desk — the desk of a working man, he thinks. Piled with letters, maps of the West, papers stamped with the crimson Lannister seal. “You’ve done well,” he tells his cousin. Damion is younger than Jaime, slighter of frame and peering out from under a shock of hair as white-blonde as Tyrion’s. It reminds him: “Any word on the Dragon Queen?”

“Yes, though not what anyone expected.” Damion rubs the bridge of his nose. “It would seem that after the Tyrells bent the knee to Aegon, Daenerys Targaryen left Dragonstone and turned her army north.”

“North?” Jaime frowns. “Can she possibly think the northern lords will rally to her cause? The wind still whispers Robb Stark’s name in those lands.”

“I haven’t the faintest, my lord. Truth be told, the North is...unsettled. The Tyrell men who escorted the Blackfish and his men to the Wall never returned. Nobody knows who holds Winterfell. If the Boltons hold it, it’s rather unlike them to be subdued. And if Stannis holds it, why stay silent? Why not trumpet his victory? My guess is that none of their ravens survived the journey south, which means the storms in the Northlands are even mightier than the ones we have faced.”

“I scarce understand why Stannis went north in the first place,” says Jaime. “Wretched place, if you ask me.” Nothing good came of traveling there. 

He goes to find Cersei, because he supposes he must. In the days after they fled the city, she spoke not a word to him, preferring to sit silently and stew on any number of his failings, Tommen always hugged to her chest. Here at the Rock, she has staked her claim over the chambers that once belonged to their mother. A glance around the place reminds Jaime of how he and Cersei used to sprawl, giggling, on Joanna’s bed when they were very young, running their hands over the cool linens. Their nursemaids always had to drag them away for bed, hefting a twin on each hip to receive Mother’s kiss.

A lump forms in his throat; he swallows it. None of that, not where she can see. Cersei has found a gown and a goblet of wine. She is quite well arranged, his sister; no one can say she does not look like she belongs. And why wouldn’t she? How many times has she told him that she is a lioness of the Rock? Hear her roar. 

They sup together in silence until Jaime can take her unspoken fury no longer.

“Out with it,” he snaps.

She is coldly serene in the odd way she has had at times since her trial. Or perhaps it was the walking naked that did it. “Dear brother, keep your voice down at the table.”

“True. I ought to be careful, seeing as our house has no qualms about murdering our dinner guests.”

“The girl was a conspirator and a whore.”

“You could find a conspiracy in your own reflection, sweet sister.”

“Indeed.” Cersei glares. She puts down her fork, still spearing a carrot, as though she is going to say something else. Then she picks it back up but speaks anyway: “You must be pleased with your little spectacle in the woods.”

Ah, this. It comes back to Brienne. Jaime laughs. “I certainly am.”

“And I suppose it never crossed your mind that —”

“No. Whatever you mean to say, Cersei, it did not cross my mind. I meant every word I said, though a better man should have said them long ago.” Secretly, he is glad that he was the one who got to do it, even if he has come away from the whole scene feeling like a thief. She asked you, he reminds himself. Not another man, she had said. I would rather it was you.

“At least you’ve a shred of awareness,” mutters Cersei. “Though none for Tommen. How could you tell him? He knows he is nothing now, and never was. All these years in secrecy gone to waste, and for what? So that you could spite me in front of your new plaything.”

Jaime pauses at that. He wants to flick his goblet of wine in Cersei’s face, but he would like as not miss. Instead, he makes himself smile. “All those years went to waste the moment we took the lad from the city. Or perhaps they were always wasted. Tell me, does Tommen seem terribly put out that he no longer gets to sit in your favorite chair?”

They both know the answer is no. Tommen is subdued, frightened, weepy at the death of his little wife, but the crown he once wore is far from his mind. It is buried beneath the snow in the shadow of the Rock. When Jaime goes to visit his son, the boy is unfailingly polite, though he cannot pry his green eyes from the floor unless Jaime lifts his chin. You are king no more, Tommen, he says. Maybe you never were. But none of the best men who’ve walked the Seven Kingdoms have been kings. He is thinking of Rhaegar, and of Brienne, but when Tommen asks, “What were they, then?” he has no answer.

To Cersei, now, Jaime replies, “Hate me if you wish, but leave our son out of it. If he is nothing to you without a crown… Gods, Cersei, we are going to the deepest of the seven hells for inflicting ourselves on the boy.”

“I am glad he is alive.” Something crosses Cersei’s face. “When Joff died — when Joff was _murdered_ — and Tommen took the crown, I thought...he is next. He will be the next one to die in my arms. To see him wrapped in a little golden shroud…” Jaime feels the now-familiar stab of pity. You did leave her, Kingslayer. Twice, you left her alone. But he remembers Margaery’s surprised face and shakes it off. “Our poor children, Jaime.”

He thinks she is going to say something about Myrcella, but she does not. He thinks she is going to pull away when he pats her hand, but she does not. She wants more, though. The wanting lights up her eyes. But this is all Jaime is willing to give, elsewise he will tear open like a raw wound. 

He leaves and finds a sword and finds Brienne.

These past days, they’ve reassumed their sparring routine, meeting each other with a lifted blade when the moon rises. Tonight, like most nights, Brienne spares Jaime hardly a word of greeting before swinging for his ribs. They fall into a silent dance, punctuated only by grunts of exertion and the clash of steel against steel. We are made for this, Jaime thinks, sidestepping Brienne’s sword and shoving her backward. We are only right with a blade in our hands and the wind in our ears. I will never be a proper lord, nor she a proper lady, but in this light we could be something else. He gets inside Brienne’s guard and crashes his elbow across her face; any other woman and you would fall over yourself apologizing, but Jaime just grins at Brienne while she glares and spits blood at his feet. 

The challenge in her eyes stirs him; the long fingers she wipes across her bloodied mouth make him gulp down the creature in his chest that has been crawling into his throat of late. Jaime tosses aside his sword. “Would you like to see the great cliffs of Casterly Rock, Ser Brienne?”

* * *

They ride under the stars, racing horses close enough to the cliffs’ edge that Jaime’s blood thrums in his ears. The wind tears a wide smile across his face; he smacks his mount across the rump and speeds ahead, whooping at Brienne as he goes by. His childhood comes back to him in bits and pieces: there the spot where Addam Marbrand scrapped with a merchant’s boy from Lannisport, there the hill where the girls would sit and braid flowers into each other’s hair, there the spot where he hung from the cliff by his fingertips because a boy said he wouldn’t. And there… He slows, wheels his horse around to watch Brienne catch up. 

“You know this place well,” she says, flushed red from cold. Jaime feels her eyes on him as he swings nimbly from the saddle and sweeps the wind from his hair.

“I am playing the magnanimous host.” He offers her a hand; she informs him with her eyes that she can dismount just fine on her own, then takes it. 

“Where are we?” Brienne asks, looking around. The spot is not plainly different than any other on the Rock: knee-high frosted grass turned silver by the moon, a stiff breeze whistling off the sea. Jaime smiles. He is still holding Brienne by the hand, and he tugs her towards the edge of the cliff. 

“This is where we used to jump,” he says pointing at the dark water below. “You can’t see now, but this stretch of the sea is free of rocks. There is a beach a short swim away; there used to be a sort of stair carved into the cliff. On hot days, you would be dry and crusted with salt by the time you got to the top.”

“I can imagine you easily as a boy,” says Brienne, then looks away as though she has admitted something crass. She drops Jaime’s hand and sits with her legs hanging off the edge of the cliff. He settles close beside her, a small pocket of warmth above the icy sea. “I used to dive from the cliffs on Tarth.”

“I remember.”

“When your feet leave the ground, there is nothing else. Just you and the wind in your ears, and then the cold sea. You can be anything, if only for a moment. A knight in the songs, a maiden.”

“The maiden who marries the knight.” Jaime smiles. Two can play at her game: he imagines her as a girl, lumbering and freckled and so ugly your eyes want to dart away. Strong, too, with long legs made for swimming. She hikes the cliff alone at the break of dawn. In a few hours, this place will be crawling with cousins and horse boys and ship hands in from the harbor, but for now she is alone: nobody to impress, no expectations to meet. She lets her flaxen hair whip around her ears while she decides who to be today. Ser Galladon of Morne, or Ser Duncan the Tall, or perhaps sweet Jenny of Oldstones, dancing the seasons away. Then she turns her eyes to the sky and jumps.

Jaime wonders, am I imagining myself? He feels a strange warmth in his chest. Knights and maidens. “It is always knights marrying a comely young maiden in the songs. Never a knight marrying another knight — I suppose you may change that one day, ser.”

Brienne huffs. “I don’t plan on marrying.”

“No? You and I are similarly disappointing heirs, then.”

“ _You_ don’t think you will marry? You are Lord of Casterly Rock. Any woman would have you, Kingslayer or not.”

Any woman, Brienne? Jaime laughs. He always thought he would marry Cersei. “And you, the heir to Tarth. Any man would have you.”

This is the wrong thing to say. Brienne’s face darkens with the memory of Ronnet Connington, and perhaps others. “It would only be out of obligation,” she murmurs. “Duty.”

She wants love, Jaime realizes with a start. A match sealed with tender words and soft touches. He waits for the flicker of pity, but it doesn’t come; instead, he finds something else. The kind of longing one only feels by the sea. Half a smile comes to his lips. “Perhaps we ought to marry each other, then, wench. One knight to another. Duty wedded to the death of duty.” He means it as a jape, but it comes out sounding honest.

Brienne looks — she almost looks tempted. “It is very like you to make a marriage proposal sound blithe,” she says slowly. For a moment, Jaime thinks she is taking him seriously, and cannot deny the thrill that races through his bones. But then she frowns. “Surely you can come up with something better when you have to propose properly.”

Jaime shakes his head. What did you bloody expect, Kingslayer? You didn’t even mean it yourself. A marriage to Brienne of Tarth! The dourest, most straight-backed woman in Westeros wedded to the shining son of House Lannister. Still, he almost finds himself willing to argue for it. I wouldn’t make a lady out of you, he might say. You could be Lady of the Rock and Master at Arms. Our heirs would be tall and blond-haired and we would teach them the sword on these very cliffs. 

He is a fool and knows it. Quickly, he says, “Admittedly, the knights I fancied in my younger days looked little like you.” That will draw her attention.

Brienne’s head comes sharply up. “What knights?”

“Oh…” The familiar shame threatens to rear its head, but Jaime tamps it down. “Ser Arthur Dayne, for one. Ser Gerold Hightower, old but strong. The Blackfish, once. Before he decided to run around calling for my head.” He smiles, wry. “You’ve a shocked look about your face, Brienne.”

“I suppose I — I did not think that you were…”

“You needn’t fret, I’m not quite like your precious Renly — our marriage is still on.” He laughs, a bit bitter. It is on his tongue to ask if she would be disappointed if he _were_ like Renly, like Loras, but does not know which answer he would prefer. “I suppose it’s odd. Men...my sweet sister, who shall I desire to fuck next?” The Maid of Tarth, he thinks, to keep the smile on his face.

Brienne is silent, her ears bright with cold. Then she touches Jaime’s hand as though it might be hot and says, “They say Arthur Dayne was handsome.”

His voice comes out raw with gratitude. “He was. And gallant. The kind of knight who made the men around him stand taller. I would have followed him anywhere.” 

They sit quietly for a time, watching the moon creep across the sea. 

On the ride back, Jaime feels lighter than he has in a long while. They chase each other on horseback like children, laughing as the wind steals their puffs of breath. Then a shout from ahead slows them. A rider approaches, probably a squire by the look of him. “A man is here from King’s Landing to see you, my lord,” he calls. “We’ve been looking for you half the night. He says it’s urgent.”

* * *

“It is a long story,” says the man, who is really more of a boy, no older than six-and-ten, “much of which you probably won’t believe.” The wooden chair Damion has procured for him creaks under his weight; he must be 20 stone at least.

“I’ll decide what I believe,” says Jaime. They are in his solar, Damion Lannister hunched over a paper and quill with which he will transcribe the conversation, Brienne standing, watching the fire. Jaime himself leans against his desk and stares down at the boy, who blinks pale eyes from beneath a flop of dark hair. He wears the black of the Night’s Watch, but Jaime can hardly imagine him at the end of the world, much less with a sword in hand. It is hardly a wonder that the Night’s Watch is always desperate for recruits if this is the type of man who guards the Wall. 

The boy shuffles, looking rather terrified. His eyes dart between Jaime and Brienne. “Right. I am Samwell Tarly. I was from Horn Hill, but now I’m a brother of the Night’s Watch.”

“Lord Tarly’s son?” asks Brienne. “Your father said you were dead.”

“Y-yes, well.” Sam ducks his head, reddening. “He sent me to the Wall when I was four-and-ten. Strange things started happening rather quickly. Men vanishing without a trace, seasoned rangers who knew the lands beyond the Wall better than anyone — perhaps you heard when Benjen Stark went missing?”

Jaime shrugs.

Sam continues, “Then something worse happened. The men started coming back.”

“Worse?”

“Yes. You see…” Sam hesitates. “The men were dead, but they walked like the living. They seemed to have some memory of what they had once been, but they were men no longer. Wights, we call them. Dead men walking, whose only purpose is to murder the living. We think the Others create them, somehow. We have...we have seen them, too. They attacked the Watch at the Fist of the First Men. Others and an army of wights. You watch the man beside you fall, only for him to rise again with blue eyes that see nothing but living flesh to destroy.”

Sam looks frightened by his own words; his chin trembles. Jaime can see the memories in his eyes. He frowns. “The Others are a children’s tale. Nobody but my wet nurse truly believes they are real."

“They are real, my lord,” Sam whispers. “And worse: they are coming. Their numbers have been growing for nigh on a year now. Jon — Jon Snow, the Lord Commander — he saw them, too. He knew what a threat they posed, so he sent me to Oldtown to become a maester...and to learn more. I did all I could, but,” he shakes his head. “The maesters will not entertain any ideas that strike them as magical. They dismissed me outright. Then Euron came.”

“Euron Greyjoy.”

“Yes. The ironborn took the city, but they didn’t seem terribly interested in occupying it. Euron came — he came to find _me_. He said I had something of his.” Sam shivers. “I had a horn that Jon found. He sent it south with me, I don’t know why. Euron took it and started to laugh. He said it was the Horn of Winter. The wildlings have been looking for it for decades, but it was only supposed to be a legend. You see, when you blow the Horn of Winter, the Wall falls down. Euron took it, and he climbed to the top of the Hightower and…”

“The sound,” says Brienne, her eyes widening. “The terrible sound we all heard. That was not long after Oldtown fell.”

“Yes. Nothing seemed to happen. The sound was terrible, I — I thought the world was ending. But nothing happened. Then Jon got a message to me, a ship out of Barrowtown. He said...” Sam’s eyes well, “he said the Wall was gone. They heard an awful sound, and then the Wall started to groan. They saw cracks appearing. Jon realized what was happening and commanded everyone to run. Still...the Wall is 700 feet tall. When it fell, most — most everyone died. Jon took everyone who was left south to Winterfell, and —”

“Who holds Winterfell?” Jaime interrupts.

“Stannis Baratheon.”

He can feel Brienne’s disappointment, but nods at Sam. “Go on.”

“The Others are free, my lord. I do not know why Euron wanted it to be so, but he’s done it. They could be marching south any day now. Jon heard that Aegon took King’s Landing. He sent me there to beg for reinforcements. We cannot possibly hope to hold them ourselves, you see. But Aegon laughed me out of the room. His Hand called it a ploy to split Aegon’s strength — they wouldn’t hear a word I said. I couldn’t write to Jon empty-handed. I guessed you had fled to Casterly Rock with King...with Tommen. I came as quickly as I could. So now I am here, asking for your help.”

A thick silence falls. The only sound is Damion’s quill scratching in the corner. Jaime looks at Brienne, and sees instantly that she believes Sam’s words. Perhaps we are more likely to believe him than anybody, seeing as we have fought a dead woman. But this….this is a child’s bad dream. This is what your mother swears will happen if you don’t stop terrorizing your nursemaid. An army of the dead, Others striding over the ruins of the Wall. What next? Dragons, direwolves, the Dothraki — ah. 

Jaime shakes his head. “I do not want to believe you, Sam.”

“My lord…”

“But I do. I do believe you. I do not think any son of Ned Stark’s would send a liar to speak for him. My question is: what is it you expect me to do?”

“We need you to come fight with us.” Sam’s eyes are wide; he clearly expected Jaime to send him away. “The Others are not like any army Westeros has ever seen, but they can be killed — I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I have killed one myself with a dragonglass dagger. March north to Winterfell. The Dragon Queen is already on her way.”

Jaime says, “ _You_ killed one?”

Damion’s head comes up. “Daenerys Targaryen took her army to fight for _Jon Snow_?”

“She chose the fight for the living over the fight for the Iron Throne.” For now, thinks Jaime, but Sam’s voice is growing stronger. “She is marching to Winterfell even now with the Dothraki and the Unsullied and two dragons in tow.”

“Two dragons?” says Jaime. “We heard there were three.”

“Ah, well…” Sam looks at his feet. “Euron Greyjoy sort of...took one.”

“He took the dragon.”

“Yes. He thought Daenerys would marry him if the ironborn ferried her army over from Essos, but Jon says she had other plans. I don’t think she knew that Euron blew down the Wall, elsewise she never would have kept him in her company. Euron, he...somehow he took over the dragon with his mind. Then he flew off. The ironborn left soon after that.”

With his mind. Jaime rubs a hand across his face. “You want me to march my army north and fight alongside Targaryens and Starks.”

“Alongside the living,” Brienne points out. “Jaime, the _Wall_ is gone. Have we not always heard that the Wall protects the Seven Kingdoms? In every story, the very worst creatures come from beyond the Wall.”

“These are the very worst,” agrees Sam. “They rip a man to pieces and he just...stands back up again. They feel no pain. They don’t get tired. And they don’t care who sits the Iron Throne, or what house you come from.”

Jaime can feel Brienne watching him. Is it possible that an hour ago they sat watching the sea? Now they debate the end of the world.

He realizes that no matter what he decides, Brienne will go with Sam to Winterfell. Her thrice-damned sense of honor will never allow her to sit idly by. And what fight will she find more honorable than this one? The more hopeless, the better, in Brienne’s eyes. An image flashes into his head: Brienne, her cheeks gray with death, her glaring eyes the wrong shade of blue. He shudders. Though he will mull over his decision in the days to come, he truly made up his mind then and there.

What do you call it when the world is ending and only one face comes to mind?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nobody at all:
> 
> me: jaime lannister coming out scene
> 
> happy pride month, kings/queens/esteemed sovereigns!
> 
> edit: i've been getting some weird messages on my private tumblr (idk how anyone found it ..?) about this fic since this chapter went up about like?? my decision to take this story to king's landing/take brienne away from her journey to find sansa, so i'll say this once. idk if those anons had rude intentions, but i don't really enjoy people being weirdly challening about decisions i made in a fanfiction lol. i sent brienne to king's landing because i wanted to do something different than the usual fic formula (which i deeply enjoy lmao look at my bookmarks) of jaime helping her find sansa before the two of them head to winterfell for endgame. i've already written that story, for one (a dance with desire), and so have many others. i realize that brienne basically leaving behind her quest is probably the most ooc decision in this fic so far, but...as i said, it's no fun to write the same story over and over. i'm not trying to mimic what grrm is probably gonna do here.
> 
> anyway, by way of an in-story explanation for those who want it, brienne initially leaves behind her quest with the intention of returning once her wounds have healed. but she has a tendency towards idealism, and to latch onto those people/causes that strike her as worthy (renly, catelyn, even jaime), so when tommen shows her kindness, she takes what she does is the best way to help him — she joins the kingsguard. again, would book brienne ever do this in canon? absolutely not! but i think it makes sense in the context of my story. at the time she truly believes that stealing tommen from KL would lead to him living a life eternally on the run, like she believes has happened to sansa (to whom this story will return, btw). in my humble opinion, her decision also makes sense considering she never considered herself a worthy heir to tarth; being in the kingsguard feels much more comfortable to her. 
> 
> anyway, im sorry if this comes off as defensive i just ? am puzzled by the messages i'm receiving and wanted to clear things up if i could. if you're confused or don't like the story that's fine! everyone isn't going to like everything! but please don't like.......act as though i'm Destroying The Character Of Brienne and How Could I Do This in my ask box (which i thought was private!). if you feel the need to do that, i encourage you to write your own story. that said, i thank the vast majority of you for your continued support and lovely comments.


	12. Chapter 12

When Jaime led the Lannister host up the Kingsroad to face the Young Wolf in battle, he did so with a grin on his lips and a sword as golden as the false hand that would replace it. Robb Stark: what was he, fifteen, sixteen? Jaime recalled him as the most striking of Ned Starks’ children. A strong chin, cool blue eyes, the beginnings of a beard. But he was still a boy for all that, and Jaime feared no man alive, and certainly not a cocksure northern boy who thought a crown would make a sound replacement for his father’s head.

If Robb Stark had inquired — though why would he? — Jaime could have advised him that a crown isn’t a good replacement for anything, really. Ask Robert. Ask Aerys. War would prove a better teacher than conversation, Jaime supposed. Robb Stark would discover soon enough the terrible things that befell boys who fancied themselves kings. 

And Jaime was right about that — only the lesson came a bit later than he was expecting, because Robb Stark’s army materialized like a brisk wind and however many skulls Jaime cleaved in that day, none of them were the Young Wolf’s. You think you know your enemy. He takes many shapes over the years, but each is as soft and meaty as the last — even the one who manages to throw you in his dungeon.

And so there is something that makes Jaime shiver when he thinks about driving his army north to fight an enemy who by all accounts is a walking bastardization of flesh and blood, an enemy who stands up, annoyed, when you slice him in two. He still cannot quite imagine it, but he spoke truly to Samwell Tarly when he said that no son of Ned Stark would send a liar in his stead. Even stupid, doomed Robb Stark always told Jaime the truth.

While the whole of Casterly Rock scrambles in preparation for the departure of its lord and army, Brienne’s things are neatly packed and arranged by the door to her chambers. As though she had known she would be leaving. 

Jaime says as much, watching her run a whetstone along Oathkeeper’s length, though sharpening such a blade is unnecessary. “Had you a destination in mind?”

Brienne flushes and avoids his eyes. “I would have asked Tommen’s leave before I went anywhere. I mean the vow I swore to him, to keep him safe. Now he is surrounded by 20,000 Lannister men.”

15,000, after Aegon took captive the lot I sent to King’s Landing, thinks Jaime. And not one of them a stronger sword than you. He frowns. “You planned to leave Casterly Rock. Where will you go?”

“With you. I am still marching north.” Brienne pauses, a sheepish look flitting across her face. “Then to the Vale.”

“The _Vale_?”

“Yes. I —” Now she is ashamed in earnest, shifting in her chair and hunching over Oathkeeper so that snarls of yellow hair hide her face. “I received a raven from Pod perhaps two months ago in King’s Landing. He said they had found Lady Sansa in the Vale. She was with Lord Arryn’s court in a lesser castle, not the Eyrie, and Petyr Baelish hawked her every step.”

Jaime sits forward. “So Clegane was right about Littlefinger’s natural daughter.”

Brienne nods, risking a glance at his face. “Podrick said that things were tense from the moment they arrived. Littlefinger recognized the Hound immediately and wanted to put him in the dungeons. Only a word from Lady Sansa — Lady Alayne, they call her — stopped him. They tried for some weeks to intercept Lady Sansa alone. Then the Hound had some incident with Littlefinger, I don’t know precisely what. Podrick did not understand himself. Littlefinger locked the Hound and Ser Hyle away. Pod only escaped punishment because he is a boy. All this concluded perhaps three weeks ago. Now Pod is trapped at court and so is Lady Sansa. He believes she is in danger.”

Brienne straightens. “This is the path I am meant to take, do you see? It is as though we were all meant to go north. When we march, I will leave you at the Vale and fulfill the promise I made. Then I will bring Lady Sansa to Winterfell. I promised Lady Catelyn that I would protect her daughters, and that is what I mean to do. ” 

They both remember, for a moment, the decimated face that once belonged to Catelyn Stark: hoary and moist and rent into pieces. Go, then, she had said to Jaime, and then turned her back on Brienne’s fast-emptying body. 

“So,” he says, “it seems you and young Podrick have had quite the correspondence.” 

“He asked me to keep it from you.” Brienne hangs her head. “Another lie, I know. Forgive me, Jaime. He said the Hound didn’t trust you.”

“The Hound remarks on _my_ honor?” Jaime wishes for a sword to swing, and a hand to swing it with. “And you agreed with him.”

“ _No_ ,” Brienne blurts. “I didn’t. I only thought...I thought you would think I was a fool. A stupid girl running from one quest to another, taking this vow and that. And you would have been right.”

He knows he would have been right. He knows that Brienne is an obstinate, beastly, brave girl, and he now knows that she is perhaps a better liar than he thought. All those hours in the day that he assumed she had been with Tommen…

“I wondered why you stayed as long as you did at King’s Landing. I expected you would flee the moment your wounds permitted it. I still wonder, but truthfully, Brienne, I have been afraid to ask.”

“I never meant to stay.” Her voice is low. Hushed. “But I failed and I knew it. I thought it was my penance to serve the king, to protect one child, at least. And you were there, and I owed you a debt.” She reddens as though this is indelicate. “Then Pod’s letter came after I took the Kingsguard vows and I knew I was a fool. I resolved that I would come with you and Tommen when the time came, then make my way to the Vale when it was safe.”

“You tried to prevent our escape.”

“Only because Ser Loras and Queen Margaery were there! I hoped you would come back another time...but everything went wrong. I realized it was too late to start over.”

Jaime has to smile at this: the memory of her standing over Tommen, declaring that only she could protect him. You told it true, wench, but you were playing at your own game, too. Those months in the Red Keep whetted her sense of guile. “I suppose we never would have escaped if you decided not to allow it.”

Brienne blinks at him. “Is that all you have to say?”

“Shall I fly into a rage? Beat my fists against my chest and lament the fact of your deceit?” He laughs. “No, wench. You are in a Lannister household, now — we are all playing at some game or another. Now, let us march north and pursue our impossible quests.”

* * *

  
Jaime adeptly avoids thinking of the last time he set out with a Lannister host at his back, for that time he could count in his company Addam Marbrand, Ilyn Payne, Peck, and Little Lewys Piper. Ahead of them waited Daven and Genna Lannister, and Pia, whose wolf-torn bodies still make appearances in Jaime’s dreams. 

Now, other than the men he appoints to command, he has only Brienne, Tommen, and Loras. Each of them is a headache in their own right. 

There is Brienne, who on some unspoken agreement shares Jaime’s tent, which is spacious and fit for a lord, but not spacious enough to stop him from laying awake and listening to her soft breathing each night. Jaime appoints her as a drillmaster of sorts, thrashing the greener men into battle shape on the march. The men jeer at first, because, as Brienne grumbles, men love to jeer, but it takes no time at all before they are cowering before her sword. 

“That’s my wench!” Jaime hoots when four snow-covered soldiers sprawl at her feet. His men soon gain a grudging kind of respect for the Kingslayer’s hulking companion — Jaime knows from experience that their respect will soon turn into praise and perhaps genuine affection. He hopes that Brienne will make a friend or two among the men, but she remains as grave and solitary as ever, seeking out only Jaime and Tommen’s company.

He feels a syrupy kind of smugness at this fact.

Then there is Tommen himself, whom Jaime could hardly leave in Cersei’s claws at Casterly Rock. His sister had flown into a wine-red rage when Jaime informed her that Tommen would accompany the army to Winterfell. “He isn’t half the warrior that Joffrey was,” she told him, which is true, though Joff set the standard breathtakingly low. Jaime managed to refrain from pointing this out to Cersei, and instead reassured her that Tommen would be far from the fighting and unneeded besides. “If it happens that we need the swords of nine-year-old boys,” he had said, “you had best hope that the army of wights forgets the way to Casterly Rock.”

But Tommen is not built for the road, and certainly not for the winter that blankets it. Jaime tents him with the squires, and though one or two of them are even younger than Tommen, the boy is plainly made of softer stuff than this rowdy lot. Jaime watches them tumble over each other in the snow and chase their horses in great loops, leaving Tommen stumbling behind. He doesn’t interfere, because as a boy he would have rather died than be seen accepting help from anyone, much less his father, though he wonders if a hand from Tywin might have been a comfort every now and then. Once, he relents and picks up his son from the mound of snow where he’s fallen, wipes the ice out of that yellow hair. Where Tommen might have once squeaked a thank you, he now manages only a solemn blink. 

And Loras. The lad can scarcely sit a horse and is likely making his broken leg worse with each passing mile. Before they departed, Jaime had finally offered him an escort back to King’s Landing, but Loras refused, muttering that he could not face his father knowing that he had allowed Margaery to die. “I’ve no use for a knight who can’t walk properly,” Jaime had laughed, but then Loras pleaded. “I will never know glory again,” he said. “I’m a crippled knight. The fight for the living is my last chance at honor.”

And Jaime Lannister cannot say a word about crippled knights. 

Each day up the River Road, however, men come complaining to him that the Tyrell boy is surly, he mopes, he threatens serving girls who come too close. By the time they pass the Golden Tooth, not a single man will tent with Loras because he reeks so horribly. 

“Bathe,” Jaime snaps at him one night, kicking at a bucket of water he’s had warmed just to appease the little sod. “Not even the horses can stand the stench of you.”

“It’s my leg. The blood is bad.” Loras scowls. He is staring hard into the fire he has made for himself, watching as it melts a ring in the snow. “It’s festered. Maester Gorman said it might.”

“And being on the road is no great help.” Jaime glares. Idiot. Idiot to let Loras come along because — because what? Because he is me. Jaime sighs. He is me, only his reckoning came earlier. 

He sends for Maester Creylen and stands with his arms crossed while the little man bends over Loras’s leg. The wound where the bone pierced through is still open, to Jaime’s disgust, and oozing a painter’s palette of green and purple and yellow.

He turns away, wrinkling his nose, then thinks better of it and gives Loras a scolding kick.

“ _Ow_ ,” the boy yelps. Maester Creylen, who plucked Jaime from Joanna Lannister’s womb, doesn’t bother finding a surprised expression. 

Jaime bends so that he is in Loras’s face. “However much you may enjoy the thought of dying, I ask that you wait until we get to Winterfell to do it. Remember, we are here to die gallantly, not by falling in a stinking heap from our horses.”

Loras looks startled; his eyes widen, then he sets his jaw and nods.

Crippled knights, Jaime thinks, and laughs to himself. He goes to find Brienne. 

His army is camped just south of Riverrun, about a week into their journey. The Red Fork runs sluggishly to the east; chunks of ice slice its banks ragged, and groan along with the current. Garlan Tyrell still holds Riverrun as far as Jaime knows, but he plans to press on past the castle as swiftly as possible. Only the gods know what allegiances the Tyrells truly hold, but Jaime presumes they are no longer friends of the Lannisters. He sends a small party of men to the castle to inform Garlan of his intentions, though he knows Riverrun does not hold a large enough force to pose a genuine threat. 

Regardless, he orders the men to dig trenches around the camp on every side except the one facing the river. The snow, already knee-deep, piles past the men’s heads as they dig. Red tents scatter the plain like a spray of blood, separated here and there by campfires, horse lines, and men drilling. Night is falling fast, and Jaime can smell stew cooking somewhere, can hear the clang of steel on steel and the whoops of a crowd gathered around a fiddler. He pushes past it all to his tent, which sits on a gentle hill overlooking the camp.

Brienne is inside poking at a brazier of coals; she looks up as Jaime comes in, shaking the snow from his hair. Tommen is asleep on a pallet in the corner. Jaime frowns, but Brienne shrugs. “He misses his pets,” she says, as though this explains it. Perhaps it does. 

Jaime kicks off his boots and flops affectedly on his own pallet, trying to get Brienne to look his way. Yes, yes, he understands just how improper it is, having a woman in his tent this way — having a woman _sleep_ in his tent this way, but he and Brienne have grown accustomed to each other’s company on the road. Jaime still thinks often of their nights pressed together in that little horse cart. Two days into their march, he was feeling the lightness that comes with being in the field, and invited her into his tent after they supped together. They talked long into the night, long past the hour of decency, ensconced together by the fire. Jaime had laughed freely at something, then gave Brienne a look of narrow-eyed mirth when she cast a strange glance his way. “Spit it out, ser wench.” He grinned.

“Nothing — just.” Brienne’s eyes were bright, searching. “Happiness suits you, that’s all.”

“You suit me,” Jaime had told her, and when she kicked at his feet he knew he had to ask her to stay.

Now he scratches at his shaggy beard and contemplates the scarlet roof above his head.. “I’ve just come from speaking with Loras Tyrell. The boy can hardly find the will to march on another day. It must be nothing more than the dream of a spectacular death that keeps him ahorse.”

“Whatever dream keeps him alive is nothing to scoff at.” They both know what folly encouraged Jaime to continue dragging himself through the Riverlands. He sniffs, accepting the rebuke.

“Anyhow,” continues Brienne after a moment, “Renly always said Loras was the truest of knights. He will find it in himself to continue on, I’m certain.”

“This is the same Loras who wanted you dead,” Jaime reminds her. 

“Only because he loved his king, as did I.” Brienne sighs, her face sinking into something maudlin as it always does when she remembers Renly. Jaime thinks he understands; there is something of his childhood worship of Arthur Dayne in her eyes when she speaks of the dead not-quite-king. Still — _Renly_? The man was good for a laugh, but little else in Jaime’s eyes. He recalls remarking to some man at arms that Renly likely wanted the crown only because it might look fetching in his hair. 

“Luckily for Loras he discovered your sense of honor quickly enough.” Jaime stretches the winter stiffness from his legs. He rolls to a sitting position and stays there for a moment, listening to the crackle of the fire and watching Tommen’s chest rise and fall. Brienne still sits by the brazier, swathed in furs over her tunic even though the tent is a good deal warmer than outside. Jaime can tell she is remembering. He chooses his next words carefully: “He told me that Renly spoke of you.”

Brienne’s head comes up with heart-aching speed. “He told you?”

“He did.” Jaime suddenly does not want to say these words, to turn Brienne’s memories of her king wretched, like dumping salt over the sweetmeats. But he has learned it is better to know the truth in matters of love. “He said that Renly found you absurd. A woman pretending to be a knight. If he loved anything about you, it was that you wanted to die for him.”

Brienne blinks; he should have smacked her — that would at least make her angry. But she only bits her lips hard and fights to arrange that broad, homely face. “You aren’t being cruel, are you,” she says, so low that Jaime has to strain to hear it.

“I’m afraid not.” 

“I see.”

He watches without pleasure as her face crumples, just a bit, just enough to distort the scar on her cheek. She is fighting to be unbothered, to persuade herself that she always knew the truth of the man, but Jaime knows now that first loves die always die dazzling deaths. 

He lets escape, “Renly was a prat and an ass besides. I don’t doubt that he was kind to you once, but everyone learns how to be kind at court. They also learn how to be cruel. Men can be both.” Brienne’s eyes are red, but he can tell she is listening, so he goes on: “If Renly couldn’t see that he had the most worthy knight, the most devoted woman in the Seven Kingdoms sworn to his service — bugger him. Lannisters learn from childhood that lions do not concern themselves with the opinions of sheep” — a lesson oft-repeated but seldom learned, but Jaime continues — “and you, Brienne, are as close to a proper lion as any of us are like to get. The Others take Renly, and Ronnet Connington and Hyle Hunt and all the rest. Surely you know you are worth more than the likes of them. Surely you know that. Let me tell you: Brienne, I know it, too.”

“Thank you, Jaime,” Brienne whispers. He is so unused to being thanked that he almost laughs, then realizes in time that she is sincere. Of course she is. She drags a hand over her face with enough force to leave a red mark and says quietly, “I hoped he was different, that’s all.”

Jaime realizes that she wants to weep but will not let herself. “Come here,” he says, holding out his hand. Brienne stares at it. “Brienne,” he says in the way that means something else, even if he doesn’t know what. 

She stands hesitantly and takes his hand. He pulls her to the bed beside him, and she sags into his chest as though she had been waiting to do it. Her tears drip onto his tunic; Jaime realizes that he has never seen her properly cry. The jape comes to his lips: it’s only fair, given that she witnessed night after night of his sobs after he lost his hand. But he swallows it down, thinking better of disturbing the butterfly alighted on his wrist. A rare sight in winter. 

An idea comes to mind. “Dance with me,” Jaime says, tugging on her hand. “Let the Kingslayer fulfill his promise.”

Brienne looks wary: she cannot take a jape, not now, not from him. She also looks like she wants to say yes; there is no hiding hope on a tear-stained face. When she stands before him, Jaime’s heart feels as though it has been doused in sunlight. He realizes the power she has over him, that her victories feel like his own, that her tears prick his own eyes.

He thinks he is likely selfish for that; he always was prone to indulgence.

They stare at each other for an awkward moment before Jaime remembers himself and straightens and swoops in close, as though they are dressed in finery before all the court. He slips his stump around Brienne’s waist and takes her opposite hand with his own and starts the steps he learned as a boy. Her fingers are as long and callused as he remembers. Has he ever seen her eyes this close?

Brienne steps lightly, a better dancer than anyone who saw her in boots and man’s mail would guess. She purses back a smile when Jaime spins her and lets it escape when he reels her back against his chest.

“I can nearly hear the music,” she whispers.

“The _Bear and the Maiden Fair_ , I’ll wager,” Jaime replies, but he thinks he hears it too. 

Brienne snorts and, without warning, dips him towards the floor. He feels insubstantial as a breath in her arms, pleasantly light-headed when she pulls him back up. There really must be music playing, Jaime is convinced of it. “Magnificent wench,” he laughs. “What have you done to me?”

“Have you forgotten what the Companions said about your penchant for flowery words?”

Jaime shakes his head slowly, serious now. “Foolish woman,” he says. “I or someone else will love the vanity into you.”

Brienne blinks, startled: it is in the air now. Jaime waits for her to pull away, because that is what he would have done, but her eyes only widen, and she tightens her hand on Jaime’s as though to stop herself from fleeing. 

Stupid, stubborn, brave wench, he thinks, and they dance until their eyes can stay open no longer.

* * *

Next day, Jaime is distracted while rallying the men for the march ahead. Snow has fallen during the night, and he leaves it to his horse to pick her way through the icy chunks that threaten her hooves. Sam Tarly is at his side this morn, looking like a sack of flour that someone has deposited in the saddle. Jaime asked him to speak more about the Others and how they can be killed, but he only half listens as Sam talks about dragonglass and fire. In fact, no small part of him wants to swat the boy around the head for interrupting his memories of the night before. He is driving his army north, but as he rides he can’t help but think, what do I care about the Others? A woman slept in my arms last night. 

Sam still quakes every time Jaime so much as throws a look his way, as though Jaime is the one who arrived spilling news of monsters and dead things and the end of the world. “The boy is a craven,” he told Brienne one night. “He can speak of no subject without his chins quivering.” Brienne had pointed out that if Sam’s stories were true — and they are marching north on the assumption that they are — he must have found courage somewhere. Jaime has to concede this point, though no matter how hard he squints, he cannot imagine Samwell Tarly killing a pheasant, much less an Other.

They ride past Riverrun without incident. The once-red sandstone walls of the small castle are stained dark brown by snowmelt. Snowdrifts stretch even higher up the walls than when Jaime was here last, narrowing into thin white fingers that look like they are grasping at the battlements. The sight reminds Jaime of blood freezing to his legs and thinking that Brienne was dead, so he keeps his eyes trained on the road ahead. 

The men he sent to treat with Garlan Tyrell find him about midday. As soon as he received word that his army’s passage would go unmolested, Jaime had marched forth, but now the men tell him the other news. 

“Ser Garlan demanded to know if his brother Loras rode with us,” the older man tells Jaime. “Said he would let no army pass until his brother was returned.”

“And yet we ride on.”

“We gave him Loras’s letter like you said. He read it twice, then read it again, then said if his brother dies on your, er, fool’s errand, it’s on your head.”

Right. Jaime stifles a laugh. How many boys must he protect? “I take it Garlan believed not a word of my explanation.”

“Actually, my lord, he appeared swayed. He recalled the disappearance of the men he sent to escort the Blackfish and the rest of the Brotherhood to the Wall. Lots of queer rumors trickling down from the North.” The messenger flicks a fat snowflake off his beard. “He told us that Aegon believes the tale about the Others is only an excuse for you to take your army to the Dragon Queen’s side.”

“If I wanted to side with Daenerys Targaryen, I would have waited for her at the Rock.”

“Tyrell seemed to think so as well. He said that the Dragon Queen may want your head more than your army.”

Tommen’s head, too, unless Jaime convinces the girl that his son is a bastard. Even then, she may take both our heads simply for a lark. Jaime sighs. “There is something about royal blood that makes its owners terribly dissatisfied with the sight of an attached head. Often my attached head.”

The messenger’s horse whickers at that, but the messenger does not. “A last thing, my lord.” He fidgets uncomfortably in the saddle. “Ser Garlan had a message for you from Aegon himself. The boy sent it along to Riverrun when he heard of our march.”

“Spit it out.”

“He has Princess Myrcella in his capture. The Dornish turned her over to him some time ago, he says. According to him, she came willingly when he promised to keep her betrothal intact and offered her a place in his court. He hopes her presence will encourage you to bend the knee.”

Jaime jerks his horse to a halt. The men around him look back in surprise, and reign up as though he is going to march them back south this very instant. “Is that all?” he asks the messenger. 

“Yes, my lord.” 

“Good. Find Tommen and bring him to me.”

Jaime nudges his mare forward, pushing to the head of the column so that all he can see is snow on either side. 

Myrcella, alive. He hadn’t even thought to look for her, his little daughter who would have ruled better than either of her brothers. Nymeria Sand — may she molder in that wretched tunnel — must have told it half true. Aegon or his agents must have met their party somewhere on the other side of the Sea of Dorne; perhaps Nymeria arranged it all. The Young Dragon would have made his offer, sweetened by the prodding of spears at Myrcella’s back, and whisked her away. Ser Balon is probably dead. A shrewd, if heavy-handed maneuver to ensure Lannister cooperation, Jaime admits. Were Cersei the leader of this army, it might have worked. 

Tommen accepts the news in his now-typical silence. His eyes well with tears that he tries to keep back by scrunching his face into a fist. 

“Aegon won’t hurt her,” Jaime assures his son with more confidence than he feels. “He knows he would lose any chance of our support for good.”

Tommen mumbles something so quietly that Jaime cannot hear. Tywin Lannister’s voice cracks in his ear: A lord _makes_ himself heard! But Tommen Waters is not a lord and never will be, so Jaime only says, “Speak up, lad.”

“Maybe we should go back,” Tommen repeats. “If we just go back to Casterly Rock, we could promise to help Aegon, and then he would send Myrcella back to us and everything could be normal again.”

Jaime’s men are watching him. He realizes they must wish as badly as Tommen that he would laugh and reveal that it was all an elaborate jape and they will be returning to their wives on the morrow.

It is a pretty picture: Tommen chasing a new litter of kittens, Myrcella’s singing drifting down the halls, golden feasts and nighttime forays into Lannisport, inveigling Brienne into a goblet of wine at the table. There are no monsters in that picture, no dead things crawling south or wrathful dragon queens who don’t need another excuse to feed Lannister heads to the crows. No Cersei whispering in Tommen’s ears and looking anywhere but Myrcella’s scarred face and waiting for the moment she catches Brienne alone.

Jaime shakes his head. Myrcella is a hostage now; Aegon would not release her if Jaime melted down every sword in Casterly Rock. “There’s no more of that, Tommen. Your life that was. Things often turn out that way — the wrong way — and there is little we can do but bear it. Recall what I told you at the Sept of Baelor.” 

Fight, laugh, or look without seeing. Sometimes Jaime thinks he can smell his father’s sweet, rotting corpse. What is one more dead Lannister?

Tommen has some fire left; his eyes flash. “But she’s your —”

“Careful,” says Jaime, making his eyes into stones. His son wilts. “Go find the squires, Tommen,” he says, trying to sound softer. “You may sleep in my tent tonight if you wish it.”

“Perhaps I was too harsh,” he says to Brienne later, when the march has halted for the night and they steal into the woods to dance. The snowy meadow glows too brightly to look at, and the trees whisper beneath the clash of steel on steel. A yellow-eyed owl glowers from the branch of a dead pine. “Gods know I would have raided King’s Landing myself to free Cersei.”

Brienne’s sword thumps his leg a bit harder than necessary at that. _Would_ have, Jaime protests silently. 

“It may be that he doesn’t truly understand the threat,” suggests Brienne while Jaime recovers his balance. There is snow down the back of his boots. “Many of the men whisper that we are marching towards nothing but children’s tales and dragonfire. I tell them to stop coming to train, then, as no one ever needed a sword to fight a children’s tale. They keep coming back.”

She sounds faintly satisfied, which means that she is smug, and Jaime grins. He slips to the side of her blade and gets in a swipe across her abdomen. Dead. 

“I fear they may be right about the dragonfire,” he admits, dancing out of reach of his punishment. “Everyone keeps reminding me that Daenerys has had a long time to imagine creative ways for me to die.”

Brienne pauses. “She won’t kill you. We will tell her the truth about her father, the wildfire...everything. How can she execute a man who only wanted to save innocents?”

“Like this.” Jaime draws his blunt sword across his neck and lets his head flop. “Or maybe she inherited her father’s love of incineration and I will cook in my armor instead. Make sure to cover your nose if that happens.”

“How droll.” Brienne looks troubled. She lowers her sword. “Jaime, promise me if the time comes, you will make your case and make it true. Make her see that you are a man of honor.”

Jaime could quite easily laugh at that, but her eyes won’t leave him, and he finds himself remembering how her heartbeat felt against his chest when they danced. He bows. “I promise,” he says, and adds _ser wench_ with his eyes.

The moon is high by the time they trek back to camp; the silver light seems strangely severe, and Jaime senses that something is wrong before they even come in sight of his tent. A squire races past, then spots Jaime and comes doubling back.

“We were looking for you, my lord,” he gasps. “He’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

“King — er, Tommen. Ser Arving was rounding us all up for supper, but no one could find Tommen and when Rolan checked their tent all his things were gone.”

Jaime curses, his heart leaping into his ears. He brushes past the squire and bursts into his tent, but Tommen is not there. “Seven godsforsaken hells.” He stamps back out into the snow and shakes his head at Brienne, who looks as pale as Jaime feels. The two of them turn south, staring at the march-torn snow. A gust of wind pushes insistently at Jaime’s back and for an instant the snow that sprays around him looks like the sad white face of a weirwood.

Winter is here, it reminds him. Winter is here and golden southron boys are not built for the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the downside (?) of obsessively working out the details of all the off-screen stuff in this story is that i get the urge to include random pod/myrcella/nymeria chapters. i think we can agree that it's a little late for that at this point but! for anyone curious about behind the scenes stuff that i know and jaime/brienne don't feel free to ask so that i can put my google doc to use.
> 
> for some reason this chapter was a bit of a doozy to churn out so comments are extra appreciated this time around :)


	13. Chapter 13

“It is unwise to go along, my lord,” says Maester Creylen, squinting anxiously through a gust of wind. All around them mill foot soldiers who wonder at the fuss for a squire who is no longer the king. “The moon is gone; the way unclear. The men will be uneasy.”

Jaime draws up the hood on his scarlet Lannister cloak, tightens the string around his chin. “I promised his mother I would keep him safe.” 

I promised myself. 

“Tell the sentries to light torches and keep an eye out in case he returns.”

It is a small party that ventures into the night: just Jaime, Brienne, and three seasoned men who volunteered when Jaime called for trackers. The trackers lead their horses in a fan out front, while Jaime and Brienne call Tommen’s name from behind. He has searched for a hunting dog with a broken leg this way, never a boy. The campfires vanish behind them, and the smell — horses, shit, sweaty men— departs soon after. 

There are no fresh tracks that Jaime can see; his army has mushed the road into a muddy river of churned snow, puddles of brown and yellow and gray plashing beneath the horses’ hooves. At length, one of the men hollers, pointing at a spray of the snow just off the road. 

“They went off here,” he says, gesturing with two slim fingers. “Someone took the time to cover his tracks.”

“They?” asks Brienne. 

Another man, this one missing most of one ear, grunts in agreement. “A man with him, no doubt. Sent the boy ahead and then doubled back to clean up the tracks.”

Jaime’s hand drifts to Widow’s Wail. Part of him thinks Tommen has a better chance of surviving the night if he is with someone, the other part knows that anyone who absconds with his son has no benign intentions. Brienne pulls her horse alongside his as they follow the trackers into the woods, her brow furrowed. She has to hunch in the saddle to avoid smacking her head on ice-sharpened branches.

“Whomever it is wants him alive,” she says lowly. “Any agent of Aegon’s would have killed him on the spot.”

“I thought the same. But who in all the Seven bloody Kingdoms likes their Lannisters alive?” Jaime shakes his head, puffing out a breath and then riding into the fog of it. This is a gelid night, the air raw enough that he feels every breath like a swallowing a dagger. He’s heard of men who do that in Essos, or maybe it was with swords. Gulping a blade right to the hilt and pulling it back out again, clean but for the film of warm breath. 

The trail meanders back west towards Riverrun, keeping mostly parallel with the River Road, Jaime thinks, but never coming in sight of it. The Lannister foot is closer to Darry than to Riverrun by now, but he still finds himself surveying the forest with some unease, remembering how it felt to run through these lands with wolf-torn legs. 

He can no longer tell what time of night it is; clouds black enough to be mistaken for the sky cloak the moon and stars. Fine, icy snowflakes start to fall at a driving pace, pricking Jaime’s cloak like hundreds of tiny needles. Ahead, the one-eared tracker exchanges a glance with the others — they will lose the trail before long.

“We will find him,” Brienne says, summoning confidence from somewhere. Another lost child; Jaime could almost laugh. “Think. They cannot be moving quickly, Tommen is too small for that. They are carrying all their provisions on their backs. He will hardly be able to push on for the whole night.”

They want him alive, Jaime reminds himself. He manages a nod. 

The trees grow thicker here, crowding each other enough that Jaime and Brienne have to dismount and weave the horses through snow-stiff underbrush. He senses the trees around him more than sees them: even the snow can only offer a gray-black glint beneath their books. Jaime accidentally kicks up a mouse tunnel, but the tiny creature is already dead, a solid gray shape that you might take for a stone even in the daylight. He tosses it into the trees, where it vanishes instantly. What scant light they traveled by has been engulfed by these slim sentinels, greedy to steal it for themselves. 

“It’s lost,” admits the third tracker at last; he rumbles more than speaks. “I can’t see a bloody thing. They could have gone in any direction from here. It’s damned dark enough that they might have accidentally doubled back on themselves for all we know.”

Jaime clenches his fist around the reins, wishing for something to fight. “I don’t understand why they have tracked west. What is in this direction? Riverrun? Garlan Tyrell wouldn’t let us past only to capture Tommen on the march. There is the Rock, but…” He trails off, catching Brienne’s eye. Casterly Rock. Who likes their Lannisters alive? Cersei, you seven-times-damned fool. You wanted your rose-cheeked son, but you are more likely to receive him blue and gray.

He curses, ignoring the men bickering about how to proceed and Brienne urging him not to abandon hope. He wonders: by what right do mothers and fathers inflict themselves upon their children? Tommen should never have been born, would never have been born if Jaime had trained his eyes on the future and not on Cersei.

Something draws his attention: a dark shape that alights on a branch near his head. It takes Jaime a moment to discern from the outline that it is a raven, blacker even than this accursed night. The bird looks directly at him and hops from foot to foot. Expectant, impatient: come on. Jaime rolls his eyes and turns away — it’s a bloody bird, you fool. But he feels the raven’s eyes boring into his skull, and when he looks back it _quorks_ and flits a few feet away to another branch. 

Jaime takes a step after it. Pleased, the raven flies to another branch, this one farther away but unmistakably marking a straight line. 

Brienne calls his name, but he doesn’t stop, only gestures without looking for her to follow. If she does, he can’t hear, for the raven is flying faster now and Jaime runs to keep up, lurching through the snow. Once, he vaults over a log and into a drift that swallows him up to the chest. By the time he claws his way out, frozen and sputtering, the raven is gone and he has to shout for it to find him. When it does, Jaime could swear that it is smirking. 

On they go until the raven disappears and Jaime skids to a stop at the edge of a hollow. It is really just a dip in the ground: a scant few brambles huddle around the edges like miserable squires who pulled guard duty. Jaime peers down and sees, there beneath what could generously be called a bush, the balled-up shape of a boy. 

It takes him a moment longer to catch sight of the man crouched a few feet away, but by then Jaime has already torn his sword from its scabbard and launched himself into the hollow. He lands up to his knees in snow, his top half swaying forward. The grey-cloaked man shouts, but he had only just been dozing beneath his hood and isn’t eager to take a sword to the face for this boy. He halfheartedly displays a dagger; Jaime kicks it from his hand and settles the tip of Widow’s Wail in what would be the hollow of his collarbone if one could see it beneath all that fur. 

Behind him, Tommen yelps, “ _Father_!”

The man widens his eyes at this — he is really quite a little man, Jaime can see now. Little men do so love his sister. Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and — shut up. 

Tommen is tugging on Jaime’s sleeve. “Father, leave him be, he’s a good man and he’s taking me home.”

Jaime shakes free, bores Widow’s Wail through one layer of fur. “Let the good man speak. Who are you? What did my sister offer you?”

A quick reply: “My name is Seban Farring, my lord.” Brown eyes blink rapidly. “I am a steward at Casterly Rock. I attend Damion Lannister.”

“And Cersei.”

“I — my lord, she beckoned me to her quarters...I never _presumed_ to —”

“Never mind. I don’t want to hear it.” Tommen is trying to speak again, but Jaime ignores him. “I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me if I am right. Like a sort of game, yes?” Seban sinks deeper into the snow. He nods. “Cersei came to you — you! A mere steward. She was really quite charming, nothing like the stories you had heard. She asked you strange things for a lady, like whom Damion met with and what they said. Now, you have served House Lannister faithfully for all your many years” — the steward is actually no more than five-and-twenty — “but Cersei convinced you that this was a special favor to her, no more. Then she, how did you put it? Beckoned you to her quarters. Perhaps around the time you heard tell that I was rallying the army to go north. She said, oh Seban, I can’t sleep for worrying what will happen to my son on the march. Do this thing for me. So you did it.” 

Seban shrinks. Jaime goes on: “But look at you, you look like a jousting spear wearing a bear pelt. You can’t fight. You can’t make a fire, even on the threat of freezing your charge to death. You aren’t built for the march, much less this.” He gestures at the hollow, the falling snow, the purple-lipped boy now watching in silence. “Cersei probably promised you riches of some kind, but you only wanted her cunt, didn’t you?”

Seban opens and closes his mouth. Jaime could soften, but he hears Tommen’s teeth chattering and cannot stop thinking about the frozen mouse. He starts to say more, but footsteps come crashing through the forest.

“ _Jaime._ ” That will be Brienne, he can just make out her outline looming at the edge of the hollow. More footsteps follow behind. Brienne slides down the slope, looking between Tommen and Seban and the sword at his throat. “We could not even see your tracks in the dark. Is it as we thought?"

“Ask the man himself.” Jaime turns back to the steward. “How did I do?”

“It is all true, my lord.” Seban hangs his head, adopting a suitably chagrined expression. “My lady Cersei feared for her son’s life on the march and in the grand fight. She promised me a keep of my own if I brought him back for her.”

“A keep?” Jaime’s laugh cuts like a dagger. “You aren’t very bright for a steward.” Maybe Cersei does fear for Tommen’s life. But she fears more that I will speak ill of her in his ears. “Tommen, come here.”

The boy stands silently at his hip. “Don’t look away,” says Jaime. He says, “Look with your eyes,” and without ceremony drives Widow’s Wail through Seban’s neck. The steward gurgles, but it is over before he can even start to die. Tommen cries out, stumbles backward. 

“Why would you do that?” he cries, chubby hands trembling. “He was kind! He was taking me back to Mother and he said she would help get Myrcella back.”

“You would never have made it to the Rock.” Jaime doesn’t have to try to make his voice hard. He wipes Widow’s Wail on Seban’s damp cloak and sheathes it, avoiding Brienne but looking directly at his son. “Your mother does not want you, Tommen. She wants you away from me.”

“At least Mother acts like my mother,” Tommen says, tears fast freezing to his cheeks. He watches his father sidestep the growing ring of red, melting snow. “She wants Myrcella to come home. You only care about some stupid fake monsters. You’re not my father.”

Jaime has never seen Tommen like this: red and swollen with anger — better than blue with cold, he thinks. Is this how Jaime looked when he first saw a man killed in front of him? Certainly not. He has the urge to smack his son, as Tywin would have done to him, but settles for flexing his fingers and then hoists the boy protesting over his shoulder. Brienne and the men are waiting, mouths agape. Jaime carries his son out of the hollow, feeling tears freeze to his cloak.

Brienne glances at him sidelong as they fight their way back to the horses. “That was ill done.”

“Cersei would have done worse."

“How did you find him? The trail was lost and you ran on a completely different path. I thought you had gone mad.”

Is the raven still fluttering about? Jaime feels a smugness radiating from above his head. “A bird showed me the way,” he says, but Brienne thinks it is a jape and frowns.

* * *

He puts guards on Tommen after that, and does not bother telling the men who accompanied him on the search to keep their mouths shut about his son’s parentage. No one wants an inbred bastard king. Fool he was to think that Tommen would be safe here on the road, but not such a fool as to leave him at Casterly Rock.

Three days’ slow march finds them at the crossroads, making camp just across the river from Harroway. The camp's outer reaches stretch to the Crossroads Inn: now just a gray stump that looks rather more like ash flicked from a pipe than an inn. Brienne’s face pales at the sight of it, this place where a creature tore away her flesh. But the inn is deserted, snow speckling the floor like flour blown through cracked windows. 

“The children may yet be alive,” Jaime feels the need to lie. She looks so weary standing there with her fingers on the table. “The men I sent to restock at Darry spied children running around the court.”

“Perhaps.” If Brienne appreciates his optimism she does not show it.

Jaime reaches out and places a gloved hand on her cheek. Perhaps there is something to say but he holds his tongue, and they merely watch each other for a few moments, remembering lost children and untorn flesh. Then Brienne nods, turns, and strides away.

She packs that night for the Vale, Tommen crouching silently in one corner while Jaime shouts over the wind with a few men outside the tent. He affects disinterest at the thought of her trekking up the High Road alone — for himself, mostly. Somewhere between _look without seeing_ and _laugh at your worries_. The Stark girl wouldn’t want him near her person, anyhow. Hells, not even Sandor Clegane trusts Jaime with the news of her discovery. 

The wind bites at his neck and suddenly he is back there in the clearing with the Brotherhood, listening to Hyle Hunt and Podrick’s toes scrape desperately on the barrels beneath them, watching Brienne throw away her life for too many promises made and unmade. A smile tears Lady Stoneheart’s face: it pleases her to see the betrayers go to their deaths. And why wouldn’t it? You promised, Kingslayer. You promised to see those little she-wolves to safety. 

So he curses and gives a word to his second man and stomps into the tent to pack his things. Brienne pauses at the sight of him. “You needn’t come. You should keep on the march.”

“I know,” says Jaime, folding a pelt and shoving it into his pack, “but maidens shouldn’t travel alone.”

He expects protest, but there is none. A smile catches on Brienne’s lips and hangs there. She hands him a bundle of kindling. “Selfishly, I should say I sm glad you’ll be with me.”

“Selflessly, I am glad to come along,” replies Jaime. 

* * *

“But you can’t go!” cries Samwell Tarly. Jaime raises an eyebrow. Sam purses his lips and reddens all over, but he puffs himself up and says, “F-Forgive me, my lord, but we must carry on the march. We’ve no contact with the North for days, now — they could be dying there at Winterfell.”

“It is another month's march to Winterfell at least. If they are dying now, I fail to see how my detour will make them die harder.” 

“Every moment counts, my lord. Please.”

Jaime relents. “Settle down, lad. The army is continuing without me and Ser Brienne. Ser Lucion Lannister is leading on in my stead. I don’t know how long we will be in the Vale, but a smaller party will catch up quickly to the main host. We will meet you before the army reaches Winterfell.”

“Can Ser Lucion be trusted?” 

Jaime looks down at Sam. It is early morning: still purple-gray and smelling of nighttime. The boy’s face is round and ardent enough to replace the setting moon. He sighs. “Ser Lucion is the son of my castellan. Where Ser Damion seems to have found his heart in books and ledgers, Lucion is a quite traditional knight. He is young, confident — he will carry on as I have directed. If not, perhaps you can lead the host, Sam the Slayer.”

Sam blushes; Jaime still finds himself incredulous at the lad’s tales, but there is no denying he has heart when he reaches for it.

Tommen stands beside Jaime’s horse, gazing between him and Brienne. Jaime puts a hand on his blond head. “Not a step away from your guards, do you hear me?”

“Yes,” mumbles Tommen, probably wondering why his father — pardon, his not-father — is allowed to go cavorting into the wilderness when he can’t. There is a part of Jaime, the part that speaks with his own father’s voice — or maybe it is Cersei’s or even Tyrion’s — that loathes to leave a Lannister behind in such circumstances. He would bring Tommen along if he thought the boy would survive even two nights in the Mountains of the Moon. No, he is safer here, even if it is not Jaime’s eyes that will watch him.

He looks to Brienne and inclines his head. “Lead on, ser.”

Brienne guesses it will be a week’s ride up the High Road to the Gates of the Moon, where little Lord Robert’s court shelters for the winter. Neither of them has ever been to the Vale, and Jaime can’t help but let his jaw sag a little at the looming Mountains of the Moon. Lucky for the Seven Kingdoms that these giants had contained Lysa Arryn’s screeching rages before her ever so timely death. Tyrion used to jape that it was a wonder that Lysa and Cersei never got on, them being of such similar temperaments. Cersei never liked that Jaime had once been intended for Lysa.

The snow muffles any sound of the army behind them before long. When Jaime peers back through a gap in the trees, he can see the host of men stir and start to crawl forward, inching like a wounded beast up the Kingsroad. It is not a promising image. Then he and Brienne are well into the mountains and he puts his army out of his mind. 

It is something one learns to do in battle. Forget the marriage alliances and the great houses and all your father’s machinations and focus on the man in front of you.

“To tell it true,” he says to Brienne that night, hunkered together beneath a pile of furs before the fire, “I can’t see any way Littlefinger lets me in his court.”

Brienne puts a log on the fire. “We are highborn. You especially. He cannot turn you into the mountains to die.”

“No. Give me a charming escort back to my army is more like it. What retribution can he fear? The Eyrie is impregnable, as they say.”

“The court is not in the Eyrie.” Brienne pulls the cloak tighter around their shoulders. Jaime tries to watch the fire instead of its light on her cheeks. “More likely he will feel compelled to let us take shelter. Perhaps we come to him under the guise of asking for more men. He will have heard that the Lannister army is on the move...they will be well past the Vale by the time we arrive. Our presence poses no threat.”

“Except for the threat it does pose.” Jaime smiles. “Deceitful wench.”

Brienne flushes. “It is not all a lie. We should ask discreetly among the men if any would rally to our cause. The knights of the Vale bear a noble reputation.”

“Mayhaps they would follow a Stark if there were one.” 

Men trampled each other to follow Ned Stark when he was alive. Robert, too. Some men are like that, they have the kind of manner that compels soldiers to sink into a line of spears as though it were their mother’s arms. Me too, thinks Jaime. Men follow me. He almost laughs: women hang for me.

“Oh, Brienne,” he sighs, dropping his head on her shoulder. “Did you ever expect that a foray into the dungeon with Catelyn Stark would bring you here?”

He is not certain where or what he means by _here_ , but the shadow across Brienne’s countenance says that she understands.

“Lady Catelyn was the first person who believed in me as a knight,” she says, slowly, as though not to disturb the sleeping Stark’s bones. “Whatever quest she sent me on, I knew I would follow it to the end. And I have not yet reached the end.”

Do any of us reach the end? Catelyn Stark must have welcomed the icy steel at her throat when it came. All her children dead: what relief except too much blood spilling over her fingers? But that was not the end for her — no, flames burned the life back into her flesh, scorching her throat, heating her eyes to glowing coals, singeing locks of once-red hair. And now...marching north to fight the end of the world, whose true horror is not so much ending as it is prolonging. Jaime shivers, wondering if anything is left of you inside when the ice pierces your heart and stands you back up again.

They move swiftly as they can through the mountains, always wary of attack from the savage clans that roam these forests, but all is unnaturally quiet. The clans have melted away to wherever it is they go when the snows reach a man’s waist. Indeed, the snow proves their greatest hazard. It piles in drifts up to the horse’s bellies in some places; the poor creatures emerge shuddering and heaving ragged breaths. Jaime has heard of horses’ lungs bursting from the cold in the North. He sometimes feels as though he will be subjected to the same fate when a gale comes wailing through the trees, snatching warm breath from his lips and freezing the water in his eyes. And yet, there is a strange beauty here. Brienne points out frozen leaves clattering at the tops of the trees, icicles glowing like strange torches as the sun sets. Squatting on the bank of a frozen stream, Jaime counts five different shades of blue, one so dark as to be black. He cares not for the silence, though, the stillness of winter. The mountains are holding their breath. 

He fills the quiet with his voice, to Brienne’s pretended ire. It amuses him to prattle on like this, see what catches the wench’s attention. She listens as intently to a tale about learning to sew dressed as Cersei as she does to another about the time he chased a horde of bandits through the streets of Lannisport. In return, Brienne trickles where she once leaked, her own stories coming out halting and frequently interrupted by Jaime’s whooping laughter. He learns that her septa only ever complimented her when she danced, that she once hid among of a flock of sheep to avoid a scolding, that she leaped from the mast onto the deck of a smuggler’s ship, that she refused to cut her hair as a child after hearing stories of Dothraki khals. 

To all these tales Jaime blurts foolish, promising things. Take me to Tarth and teach me to sail, he demands. Show me the cliffs where you jumped.

And Brienne huffs at these, because Jaime is a highborn gentleman and these are the things she always imagined a highborn gentleman would say. Even if he is the Kingslayer. Even if he used to call her wench and now he calls her ser and my lady and sometimes _oh Brienne_. 

And Jaime enjoys when she blushes or bites down a smile at his words, because no lady he ever cared about ever blushed at him. He lets himself enjoy it even though this is Brienne, and Brienne often looks at him as though she finds his very visage to be crude. 

Still, he wonders.

He wonders all the way to the stout gray walls of the Gates of the Moon, which appear decidedly underwhelmed at his and Brienne’s arrival. Jaime supposes not even one-handed knights appear impressive when one squats in the shadow of the Eyrie. If he tilts his head back far enough to crick his neck, he can just make out that distant castle, glowing high and white as the moon.

“Suppose it falls,” he says lightly to Brienne, shoving aside trepidation at what they are about to do. “Suppose water slips in a crevice and freezes and sends the whole cliffside cracking.”

“This keep doesn’t look as though it would flinch,” she says, and she is right. The Gates of the Moon look as though they themselves have been dropped from a height, slamming snugly into the mouth of the valley like laying a brick. Jaime would not like to lay siege to this place. And yet, what he and Brienne must do now unnerves him more than any siege: now, they must treat with Littlefinger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit of a transitional chapter – i needed to get these guys to the vale, where we will be meeting up with sansa, pod, the hound, hyle hunt, and everyone's least favorite jay gatsby wannabe.


	14. Chapter 14

The talk at dinner turns presently to kings.

A man like Littlefinger, kings are never far from his mind. Nothing seems out of reach for a man who clawed his way from a few sea-slimy stones all the way into the Red Keep. Cersei used to laugh that seeing a man of humble birth at court was like patting a street dog with perfume brushed into its fur. No smell entirely masks the grime of a life that had to be earned. 

Jaime doubts very much that Cersei ever petted a street dog. 

So, yes, kings are on Littlefinger’s mind. Jaime cannot blame him. If any towheaded lad can declare himself a lost Targaryen prince, for what good was all his delicate scheming? The boy’s lack of subtlety grates like bone on bone. No finesse. 

“He would have simply laid siege to the city if not for your clandestine bit of work,” says Baelish, waving his spear in imitation of a man at arms. “Very clever, that. I admit I had not taken you for a Targaryen sympathizer, ser.”

Is that the game? Most people call Jaime _my lord_ by now. Never before has _ser_ made his fingers itch. He smiles over his plate. “And I didn’t take you for one to disparage the Targaryen line in front of one of their devoted allies. Me, I mean. Everyone tells me I am a dragon lover now.”

“Oh, it is all japes.” Baelish shrugs. “The Vale proudly bends the knee to the rightful ruler of Westeros. I am glad to serve where I can. And as for your sympathies, well.” He tilts his head knowingly. “I believe the entire realm knows that your heart lies with the lions. My lord.”

Jaime stifles a sigh. Perhaps he doesn’t know the game. He has always nurtured a small respect for Littlefinger; the man served Robert well, even if the whole court knew he concealed any number of personal plots behind his teeth. Jaime once believed he would make a decent Hand to Tommen — he would have been competent at least — but that time is well past by now. 

It is just four of them around the table on this blustery night: Jaime and Brienne on one side, wearing borrowed navy tunics, and Littlefinger and Alayne Stone opposite. A few servants scuttle in and out, but the hall is dim and quiet despite the complaining wind and kitchen sounds down the corridor. This oaken table is too proud for so humble a gathering. 

Alayne Stone: she is Sansa Stark but barely. Jaime thinks she is taller than when he last saw her, or maybe something is changed in the way she carries herself. Her hair is darkened now, soil brown like her sister’s, her countenance calcified into something stern and vaguely lupine. Something like Ned Stark, Jaime thinks. But you cannot do anything about the eyes: Alayne Stone’s are still that deep Tully blue, the color of the banners Jaime’s men ripped from the walls when he won Riverrun. 

Sad eyes, he thinks, studying them. She has been quiet while they eat, only speaking up to offer this dish or that to Jaime and Brienne. How demure: the very picture of an up-jumped bastard. At Jaime’s side, Brienne can hardly keep her eyes off the girl. He has to step on her foot twice to interrupt her staring — not that he doesn’t feel the same urge. That night that Catelyn Stark slipped into Jaime’s cell with a bottle of wine and set him free, the night that led to meeting Brienne and losing his hand: it had all hung on the thread of a drunken promise. That promise dines just across the table from him. 

Would Ned Stark have allowed that glass of wine?

The tension when he and Brienne arrived at the Gates of the Moon had been instant. Quick as he was, Jaime spotted the flicker of concern in Littlefinger’s cat eyes when he recognized Jaime. He can imagine the hushed conversation Baelish and Sansa Stark must have had in some locked room, the two of them rehearsing exactly how Sansa must perform to prevent this nosy Lannister from remembering her. Perhaps it would have worked — if Jaime hadn’t been looking. 

He thinks Sansa looks a bit agitated sitting here, slicing her meat into neat bites and eating them with precision. Forks clink in silence for a while. Littlefinger listens attentively to Jaime and Brienne’s request for whatever men he can spare to join the fight in the North — at this, Sansa’s eyes widen just enough — but remains as noncommittal as they expected. 

A wave of the hand: “The Vale is safe from any monstrous threat. These mountains are taller than the Wall, you know, and I’ve heard of no horn that fells mountains. Forgive me, but the lords of the Vale may not take kindly to me sending their men to fight the North’s battles. ”

“But, Father,” blurts Sansa, gripping her fork, “the threat to us may grow if Winterfell falls. Should the armies of the North prevail, they may seek to punish us for standing by.”

Yes, Father. What good is the heir of House Stark if she’s no castle to rule?

Baelish digests that. “If the fight is as hopeless as you describe,” he says, turning to Jaime, “surely the North will be thrown into chaos. The remaining houses will need a stable region to assist in their rebuilding. Those of us in the Vale would be honored to aid that purpose. We are one of the realm’s more isolated regions. Rather like Tarth in security, if not in might.” He chuckles.

This is only pretense, an excuse to get inside the court, but Jaime still finds anger bulging in his chest. “The whole bloody realm will be thrown into chaos. If half the stories out of the North are true, this will be a fight like none Westeros has seen since the Conquest. Worse, even. And,” he adds, wanting to soil Baelish’s patronizing smirk, “you could do both Lady Brienne and me the courtesy of looking at her when you speak.” 

Brienne straightens, disordered. Littlefinger looks taken aback, but before he can respond, Brienne speaks.

“My lord,” she says, biting her lips. “Forgive me, but you speak as though the whole of the Vale answers to you. Has something happened to Lord Robert Arryn?”

Baelish regards her for a moment before replying. “As I said before we began our meal, Lord Robert has been unwell for several days. He has always been a frail boy, you see, tiny for his age and plagued by shaking spells. My dear Lysa always doted on him for that reason. Now that she is gone, Alayne often cares for her little Sweetrobin.”

“Even baseborn boys are hardier than he,” says Sansa sadly. “Might I offer you some roast carrots, Lady Brienne? They are delicious with salt and honey. Anyhow,” she continues, “I fear this recent spell has taken him most forcefully. I should not say this, but...I find myself fearing for his life.”

“Now, now.” Baelish strokes Sansa’s hand. Something about the gesture grabs at Jaime’s stomach. “Gods willing, Lord Robert will recover. But as he ails, I hold the title of Lord Protectorate of the Vale, decreed by my wife Lysa Arryn before her death.”

The grief on Littlefinger’s face then is so perfectly genuine as to be the product of study, hours spent observing the contours of mourning on other mouths, other cheeks. But the eyes, thinks Jaime again. You cannot do anything about the eyes.

* * *

He finds himself alone and a bit wine-heavy in his quarters that night. Outside the window, snow falls thick and fast as rain. It wouldn’t be this heavy on the Kingsroad, Jaime hopes. He would rather not return to find his men eating their horses and sleeping in the carcasses. 

The room provided for him is sparse, the wooden furniture dusty and tense-looking, as though nervous at Jaime’s presence. What’s a Lannister doing in the Vale? A mouse runs squeaking from beneath the bed when he sits on it. He gets the sense that this castle housed few guests before winter came — one struggles to imagine Littlefinger living in such laxity. 

When the faint voices and servants’ footsteps cease outside his door, Jaime slips into the hall and wanders in search of Brienne’s chambers. He wears only a thin white shirt and pants: perhaps not the proper garb to visit a woman, but the wench has seen him dressed far more slovenly than this. 

Feet come pattering behind him. Jaime turns, somehow not surprised to see the diminutive Podrick Payne, Tyrion’s old squire, and Brienne’s traveling companion. The boy’s straight black hair has grown past his shoulders, but when he tilts his head Jaime can see the rope scar on his neck. “Ser,” he whispers, “you’ve passed m’lady’s room. Follow me.” He leads the way back down the darkened corridor, taking a turn Jaime had missed and knocking on a door not far from where he began. 

Brienne cracks the door, then flings it open and halfway shouts, “ _Pod_ ,” snatching the boy off the ground and into her arms. Jaime closes the door behind him and watches a bit awkwardly as the two embrace, Brienne murmuring apologies into Podrick’s ear. The boy shakes his head vehemently, showing no desire to let go. He clings to Brienne’s leg when she finally puts him down, her face flushed with joy. Jaime thinks of Tommen and keeps his eyes on his golden hand. 

“Ser my lady.” Podrick beams. “I knew you would come.”

“I am a ser for true now, Pod,” says Brienne, glancing at Jaime with such gratitude that he cannot decide whether to preen or shudder. “Jaime knighted me after we escaped the city.”

The whole tale follows: monsters in King’s Landing, Tommen’s crown beneath Casterly Rock, monsters in the North, slogging through the winter snows, the abandoned inn at the Crossroads, the picture of winter in the Vale. 

Podrick has his own story, which he tells haltingly to Brienne, casting only the occasional hesitant glance at Jaime. Hyle Hunt and Sandor Clegane spent the journey to the Vale bickering at best and coming nearly to blows at worst. Pod watched trembling by the campfire one night as Clegane slammed Hyle against a frost-covered pine for suggesting — you can picture the conspiratory smile perched on his lips — that their party trade Sansa Stark for a reward should they find her.

Littlefinger recognized the Hound from the moment he entered the castle. Clegane explained with a grunt that he was only a hedge knight now, looking for somewhere to spend the winter. Far from the Lannisters, he said. 

Podrick can’t say if Littlefinger believed a word of it. Alayne Stone appeared only in the shadows after they arrived, however, showing her face just enough for the Hound to recognize her. Privately, Jaime wonders if it were some sort of smug superiority that moved Littlefinger to let Clegane stay. He would hardly be outsmarted by the Hound; why not keep him close, see if he proved useful. And if not: would anyone complain to see Sandor Clegane’s head on display?

But something happened. “We couldn’t find her alone for almost a month,” says Pod. “Clegane thought she might have told Littlefinger that he would recognize her from when he was in the Kingsguard.”

“Heeding my charming son’s orders to beat her black and blue, no doubt,” says Jaime.

“He never did,” says Pod immediately. “Th-that’s just what he said,” he mumbles at Jaime’s raised eyebrow.

“Go on, Pod,” says Brienne, shooting Jaime a glare. “What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly.” Confusion smears Podrick’s brow. “Lady Alayne is betrothed to Ser Harold Hardyng, who’s going to inherit the Vale. His arms are a field of red and white diamonds and the silver falcon of House Arryn. He’s one of the Winged Knights who guard Lord Robert.” 

“Never heard of them,” says Jaime. 

Podrick shrugs. “The kitchen boys say there was a tourney before we got here to decide who could be a guard. I wish I could have gone. But all the Winged Knights do is stand outside Lord Robert’s sickroom.”

Jaime tips back his head and laughs. “They are true knights, then.” Brienne’s eyes berate him: can you take nothing seriously? He winks.

“Anyhow,” Podrick goes on, glancing between the two of them, “Clegane was angry when he found out about the betrothal. He and Ser Hyle went looking for Lord Baelish and then…well, I don’t know. They saw something bad. Littlefinger wanted to h-hang them, but Lady Alayne persuaded him to put them in the dungeons instead. Then Lord Robert got sick. They sent me to work in the kitchens,” he adds as an afterthought. 

A silence follows. There are pieces of the answer here, Jaime senses, but it is rather like trying to sketch a constellation on an overcast night. Littlefinger wants Sansa to become lady of the Vale, that much is clear. Did the thought truly upset Clegane so much? Perhaps the man simply grew weary of biding his time. 

And now he is counting rats in a dungeon. Let that be a lesson.

It is late by now, and Brienne sends Podrick off to the servants’ quarters with a last embrace. 

“You missed him,” Jaime observes unnecessarily when they are alone.

“Terribly,” Brienne admits. “He has grown so much these last months. I suppose children are like that.”

“Pesky habit of theirs.” Jaime smiles, but it dissolves like mist when he thinks of Tommen in the snow and Myrcella sitting straight with spears at her back. Both of them growing ever up and away, out of his reach. Savoring the taste of adolescent insults: you’re not my father. 

Jaime would have cheerily agreed, once.

Brienne considers him from across the room. He can feel her looking him up and down, cautious as a doe with its eye on a dog, taking in his appearance and perhaps more. He hopes for more. It is time now to return to his own chambers — he wants Littlefinger to discern as little about him and Brienne as possible — but there are oh so many reasons to linger. Her hair loose and resting on broad shoulders. He has grown used to her presence in the night.

“I’ll be going, then,” he forces out, before he can do something like cross the room and pull her face close enough that those bloody eyes would have nowhere else to look. 

“Would that you could stay,” Brienne says softly. Her face cracks with embarrassment, but she offers no explanation. Earnest as the face of the moon. And Jaime loves her for it, this beast of a woman, who has so often whispered the things he would shout if she weren’t the only person who ever tied his tongue.

He says, “In another time.”

He takes her hand and kisses it as he did under the disapproving stars that night in King’s Landing. The taste of her skin on his lips sears his senses — like kissing a sword fresh from the forge. 

When the moment passes Jaime all but flees into the hall, where he rests his forehead against the wall, cursing under his breath. Behind the door, Brienne makes a muffled sound of frustration. At him or at herself, he wonders.

Oh, Brienne. If there is a net below us, I can see only the spaces between the rope. 

Jaime sleeps poorly that night, missing her deep, even breathing across the tent; and when he finally dreams, it is of leaping into the sapphire seas of Tarth.

* * *

The days that follow are fraught with the kind of tension particular to court: the kind that goes cordially unacknowledged. One must espy it by noting servants lingering too long behind doors, knights’ knuckles white on their sword hilts, the lord himself murmuring something just out of earshot. It is the sort of thing Jaime developed an eye for in Aerys’s court, where he learned to read the king’s mood in the pallor of his wife’s face. 

Littlefinger — and by extension his court — make no mention of Hyle Hunt or the Hound. It is not a subject that would ordinarily slip one’s mind, Jaime remarks to Brienne: having the Hound in the dungeons. Surely he must bark.

The two of them try in vain to speak with Sansa Stark alone, but Littlefinger keeps her tucked away or by his side. Jaime sometimes feels her gaze on him: accusatory, naturally, but he senses that his proposition that first night piqued her interest. Whatever she thinks she is playing at in the Vale, she is a northern girl at heart. You cannot quite tame a wolf, however much she may look like a dog. Recall the flashing yellow eyes at Lady Stoneheart’s shoulder. 

Jaime and Brienne spend long nights hunched by the fire in her chambers, sometimes with a kitchen-weary Pod, each suggesting some answer to their problem then dismissing it just as quickly. Eventually, he will fetch a goblet or two of wine and drink enough to baffle Brienne as to the source of the flush on his cheeks. She believes that their oaths to Sansa’s mother will be enough to convince the girl to leave. My family slit her mother’s throat, Jaime reminds her, but the wench is insistent. 

Perhaps Sansa does not need to know that he murdered Catelyn Stark a second time. One murder is excusable, but two! The she-wolf will turn up her nose.

She is poised to inherit the Vale, Littlefinger has ensured that much. What exactly he means for her to do as the lady of the Vale, neither Jaime nor Brienne can predict. 

Nothing good, Podrick suggests. 

Whatever the goal of the scheme, Robert Arryn’s continued absence only makes Jaime increasingly uneasy; he guesses it is the source of tension he has noticed these last few days. The boy appears to have vanished, as children are wont to do of late. Any inquiries as to his whereabouts are brushed off. He is in his sickroom, the servants will say. Coughing up his rib cage under Ser Lothor Brune’s watch, reply the Winged Knights.

Questions like summer weeds sprout from Jaime’s mind. Many of them relate not at all to Sansa Stark. None of them have answers. He rolls his eyes: of course not. Especially when women are concerned, Jaime has found that one answer often leads to more dogged curiosity.

He loves Brienne. So be it. All these months later, the realization lands with a sense of anticlimax: more akin to a tree discovering that it has roots — and has always had them — than some dizzying effulgence. A fact of his being no more tangible than the phantom hand at the end of his wrist, but no less integral for that. 

He cannot even pinpoint a moment of understanding in his mind, a gesture or conversation that reflected his feelings back in his face, blinding. Which begs the question: did he always? He squeezes shut his eyes and thinks of _no, you must live_ ; the torchlight on her exposed skin; of the bear pit; that blue dress around her shoulders and Oathkeeper in her hands; the way his feet followed her on their own volition; his one-handed specter in her dreams.

Perhaps it wasn’t always. But it has been long enough.

Still, the damned questions! What is he to do about it? Before now, it had only ever been Cersei: his reflection, never a question as to how or if — only when and where. Only: gods, do you think they saw us? 

With Brienne, he doesn’t know where to put his feet. He is loath to inflict himself upon her; a dance here, a kiss on the hand there, yes, but anything else? A proper kiss? A confession? He could laugh aloud at the thought: confession is precisely the word for it. I am guilty, Brienne, here is the name of my sin. 

How strange that the feeling settles on his shoulders here of all places. The Vale, where they have pressing business and no time to spar beneath the moon or fiddle with each other’s armor. Perhaps that is exactly why Jaime feels sick to his bloody marrow with longing. 

He has never been well-suited for those moments when life slows its breakneck pace and he can hear his heartbeat rather than hoofbeats pounding below.

They have been in the Vale four days when Jaime opens the door to his wretchedly empty chambers and spies a slip of paper on the windowsill. A glance is enough to tell him that it is not in Brienne’s hand — his traitorous heart sinks at this, though why Brienne would be writing him notes is a fantastic mystery. The note reads:

_Lord Lannister,_

_Your efforts to reach me have not gone unnoticed — to my eyes, at least. Meet me beneath the western guard tower after supper. Come alone and discreetly, please._

_Alayne Stone_

He reads Brienne the contents immediately. 

“You must go,” she exclaims. “Jaime, this is our chance.”

“Of course I’m going — but I am frankly displeased about it. Why ask me and not you? Littlefinger himself may be behind all this. He’ll be waiting eagerly for me to arrive so that he can be certain about our deception and toss us into the snow.”

But he goes, and waiting under the stairwell beneath the west guard tower is unmistakably Sansa Stark. She stands with the air of one much older than herself, back straight enough that you wonder if a sword is poking her beneath her russet gown. Jaime is again reminded of Myrcella: something about that careful, well-ordered expression that women learn too young. 

He is ready for a dagger or a poison-tipped needle, but Sansa Stark grants him a smile instead. 

“Lord Lannister. I was not certain you would come.”

“I am not certain I should have,” Jaime replies. “We are not terribly well hidden.”

Sansa shakes her head. “There aren’t enough men to fill the western tower. This one contains only empty beds and chests full of dusty clothes. Come.” She stands and leads him through a neglected-looking door. The room beyond indeed appears abandoned. It is a barracks, slim beds arranged around the circular wall, a chest at the foot of each one. Jaime opens a chest and finds it empty. Every object in sight is so gray-brown that the ash-blackened fireplace against one wall manages to catch his eye. Sansa sits at a table near it and waits for Jaime to do the same.

He remains standing. “I suppose I should call you Lady Stark.”

“I am the lady of nothing yet.” Sansa folds her hands primly in her lap. “To hear you tell it, my brother Jon Snow may have a word to say about my inheritance.” 

“Your sister is alive, and not the farce you may have heard tell of in Winterfell,” Jaime feels compelled to say. “She was, anyhow. She left Sandor Clegane dying at Saltpans sometime after your uncle’s wedding. Gods know where she’s got to by now.”

Sansa nods. “Sandor told me as much…how like Arya to be parading around as a boy.” Then she tilts her head. “My uncle’s wedding, is that how you think of it?”

Sandor? Jaime affects a more casual shrug than he feels. “The Red Wedding is what they call it, I suppose. The day your lovely mother and brother met their bloody ends.”

Now Stoneheart is rasping in his ear, words he has oft heard from the living but never the dead, at least not in this waking world. Kingslayer, oathbreaker — Jaime gives his head a shake. Come up with something new, he tells her.

“When you told Petyr of your trek to Winterfell I wondered: do you regret any of it? You and yours authored so much of my family’s suffering. How will you feel when you walk through Winterfell and recall that my brothers once ran laughing down those halls, that my mother stood in the outer yard and begged us to return the night we rode south? Would that any of us heeded her warnings.”

Sansa turns away, but not before the tears on her cheeks glint in the halflight. Jaime sighs; he sits heavily on a bed opposite her and lays Widow’s Wail across his knees. This blade was once half of Ned Stark’s sword. No doubt Sansa Stark grew up hearing the whisper of this very Valyrian steel in its scabbard when her father looked in on her at night.

Jaime envisions a Catelyn Stark in miniature. Wake up, he wants to say. You’ve not much longer with him. 

“I don’t suppose you would believe me if I told you that I’ve tried many nights to regret what my family did to yours. What I did personally before…” He waves his golden hand.

Sansa eyes it curiously. “It did not seem polite to ask. Did my brother do this?”

“Now wouldn’t that have been just.” Jaime makes himself smile. “No, your Robb spared me that. This was the work of men cruel even to the eyes of a Lannister. Perhaps Ser Brienne will tell you the story if you ask — it is not one I am fond of. But believe me, Lady Stark, I spent many a sleepless night in the Riverlands gazing at the sky and trying to learn my lesson. Maybe it all went awry when I put a bastard on the Iron Throne. I had a hand in Ned Stark’s capture, perhaps that was my worst sin. Or was it sooner, was it the day I shoved your brother to what ought to have been his death?” 

Sansa gasps. “You —”

“Yes.” He should close his mouth before he crushes the sliver of trust she displayed in meeting him here, but confession is on his mind. “I pushed Bran Stark from that tower and when he didn’t die I considered slitting his throat myself. What sort of life can a cripple live? That’s a jape, my lady.” 

“Then I thought, perhaps it was even earlier that I went astray. Perhaps it was that day I shoved my sword through the Mad King’s back while Rhaegar’s children were dying. Or so we thought.” Tiny scarlet shrouds, all in a row. “But no. No...true regret is hard, Lady Stark. That is what I learned as I lay calling for death. So if you brought me here to express my sorrow and beg your forgiveness, I am afraid you have wasted your time. I’ve bled the blood I owed. That is all the repentance you will get from me.”

At length Sansa says, “You are not what I expected, Lord Lannister. And yet, I expected as much. Men are rarely what we imagine them to be, have you noticed that? And no, I did not invite you here to listen to some stupid, feeble apology. I brought you here because you are going to take me home.”

Jaime raises an eyebrow. “That is precisely what we came to do.”

“I know. Sandor told me everything when I slipped away to see him. We will need to free him and Ser Hyle from the dungeons. That can be managed.”

“I must admit my surprise, Lady Stark. You appear the very picture of satisfaction with your position. I had begun to wonder if we might simply leave you here to your mountains and your dashing betrothed. He’s a self-serious one, isn’t he?”

“Harry is kind.” Is that a blush on her cheeks? “But I cannot marry him. I am of Stark blood, wolf blood, and Petyr is not my father, however much he likes me to say otherwise. Winterfell is mine by rights, and it has been too long without a Stark in its walls. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, my father said. I will leave Harry to rule in my stead, as is his right.”

“It would seem there are a pair of names ahead of his.”

“Not for much longer.” Sansa glances at him. “Petyr has poisoned Sweetrobin,” she says flatly. “He did it after he threw Sandor in the dungeons. He worried the whole thing was taking too long — he hoped Sweetrobin would catch a chill when we traveled down from the Eyrie, you see. But he didn’t… The poison is slow, but it is unstoppable. Petyr tells everyone that Sweetrobin is sick, but I see the bloody rags the maester takes from his solar. It will not be long before Petyr has murdered him and no one else stands in our way.” She frowns. “His way.”

Jaime chews on this. “And Littlefinger himself?” he asks finally. “Do we imagine he will simply let you flounce out the gate?”

Sansa glares: _flounce_. “He’s a killer. He killed my aunt Lysa and he is killing Sweetrobin. Once, I thought he meant me for something great, but...Petyr toys with so many pieces. I was just one of them. A favorite. I mean to bring him to justice.”

“He betrayed your father, too,” Jaime adds, finding that he cannot scrounge up any sympathy for the man. Yes, he learned to read the king’s mood on his wife’s ashen face, once. Sweet Rhaella. There is something of her in Sansa’s expression. “One thing I don’t understand, my lady: why meet with me alone? This is more Brienne’s endeavor than mine.”

“So I hear.” Sansa holds up a lone hair in front of her eyes. When she yanks it out, Jaime can see dimly that it is red. “I needed to decide if I can trust you, Lord Lannister. If I can’t do that, I am safer biding my time in the Vale.”

Jaime laughs. “And have you made your decision?”

“Yes.” The light in Sansa’s eyes is not altogether friendly. “I think you are murdering slime playing at being a knight in a story. But I think you and I have both learned that there are no knights of song, no noble heroes who sweep captured maidens to safety. Not really. But let us pretend, shall we?” She smiles so bright and falsely wide that Jaime is reminded for a blazing moment of Cersei. 

He forces levity. “You are in luck, Lady Stark. My companion is the truest knight who ever walked these seven wretched kingdoms. Brienne hanged for _me_ ; she would fall on her sword for you if it meant fulfilling her promise to your mother.”

“A lady knight. My sister would like that.” Sansa nods at Jaime. “I have said all I came here to say, my lord. Things will move quickly from here.”

Jaime is in the doorway when he pauses. “My lady. What was it that Sandor saw to make Littlefinger lock him away?”

Sansa’s fists turn white in her lap. Without looking at Jaime she murmurs, “Too much.” 

Sapphires, sapphires, sapphires.

* * *

Things do happen quickly. Jaime spills the whole conversation to Brienne and Podrick, and the next day the lad discovers a key to the dungeons in his kitchen apron. He stands watch beside two curiously slumbering guards as Brienne and Jaime slip past empty cells in search of Clegane. 

“The gods have subjected me to more than one scheming wench,” Jaime whispers, casting a glance back at the guards. Brienne rewards him with an elbow in the ribs. He is impressed, despite himself. Prim and proper Sansa Stark: ghost of the Vale.

Sandor Clegane has never looked so surprised as he does when Jaime pokes his head through the cell door and waves the key at him. 

“Didn’t think you’d ever come,” he grumbles, kicking a squeaking rat and snatching the key from Jaime’s hand. 

“Come now, we couldn’t leave our favorite dog in the kennels, could we, wench? Brienne?”

But Brienne is talking to Hyle Hunt in the opposite cell. Jaime keeps his back firmly turned. How had Loras Tyrell put it? Hyle Hunt and Mark Mullendore and a few others...they courted her like the Maiden herself. 

“Perhaps we should leave Hunt behind,” he mutters to Brienne as they collect Podrick and creep back to the castle. They have left Clegane with the key concealed beneath a pile of straw and the promise to send Pod along with a message when it is time. 

“You must hold your tongue around him,” Brienne replies, nudging his shoulder. “He has proved his worth and his bravery —”

“By breaking maidens’ hearts and asking for their hands in marriage, yes, it’s coming back to me.”

Brienne tries for amusement. “And I suppose your concern for maidens’ hearts is documented.

“Is it not?”

But she is ignoring him and striding down the hall with Podrick at her heels. It is on his lips to remind her of his dream — his dream of her — but the whole thing strikes him suddenly as selfish and scatterbrained. Do your duty for once, Kingslayer. 

Sansa has asked for time, so they pass a restless few days pacing the castle and dodging Littlefinger’s increasingly pointed questions. They are apposite questions, too, things like: Haven’t you an army to lead, my lord of Lannister? One struggles to find a proper answer to a question like that. 

When the time comes, Sansa inveigles Littlefinger into putting on a feast. To see their guests out, she says. Jaime and Brienne have made a show of packing their things and saying their regretful and gracious goodbyes. The splendid oaken table where they dined that first night now bustles with knights of the Vale, Arryn bannermen stuck to their wives at the elbow, and single ladies in colorful skirts. One of them — this one in a green skirt — is very nearly cradling Jaime’s left arm. A gray-faced maester sits between Sansa and Littlefinger; at her other side is her sandy-haired betrothed, Harry Hardyng. Harry, too, looks a bit ashen-faced; perhaps Sansa has told him what is about to happen. Robert Arryn is nowhere to be found, though Brienne points out his Winged Knights treading ruts around the edges of the hall. 

Servants bring out the roast pheasants and trays of steaming vegetables. There’s Podrick, trotting behind an enormous man pushing a cart piled with bread. Jaime waits, picking at his food and ignoring the girl on his arm, casting the occasional grin at Brienne when she frowns at them. He is just about to ask what is taking so bloody long when Sansa puts a word in Littlefinger’s ear and stands up in her place. 

“My friends,” she starts, any nerves slipping off her straight shoulders, “I am grateful for the time I have spent here in the Vale. Even as Westeros wars, we sit here above it all, watching. Waiting, perhaps. I have learned a great many lessons here.” 

The hall quiets. Littlefinger’s neat little eyes flicker to Jaime and Brienne then back to Sansa. The green skirt clutches Jaime’s arm in anticipation. 

“Piss off,” he hisses, snatching his arm away.

Sansa doesn’t spare them a glance. “Many of you have been kind to me. And so believe my regret when I say I have deceived you all for some time now. My true name, you see, is —”

“Daughter,” Littlefinger interrupts, snapping to his feet. 

Harry the Heir puts a hand on his chest. “Let her speak.”

Sansa raises her voice above the tittering hall: “My name is Sansa Stark, daughter of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, daughter of Winterfell. Lord Baelish is not of any blood to me. He secreted me from King’s Landing after the death of Joffrey Baratheon, knowing that I would be suspected of the murder, and for that I thank him. I thank you, truly, Lord Baelish for your many teachings. You taught me that a little bird can accomplish a great deal by singing the right songs to the right people.”

The hall is hushed now. Sansa goes on. “Lord Baelish, you murdered my aunt Lysa. You said you only ever loved my mother and you shoved her through the Moon Door. You helped poison Jon Arryn with Tears of Lys and turned Houses Stark and Lannister against each other. You betrayed my father in the capital. And now you have murdered Lord Robert Arryn.”

A gasp flies around the table. Brienne’s hand drifts to her sword, but Jaime stops it with his golden one. Wait.

“She speaks the truth.” This from the shaky maester, who now stands. “Lord Arryn died yesterday morning from a queer poison whose antidote was not to be found in all my stores.” He bows his head. “The boy was frail, but this was no shaking spell. I thought so at first, but then came the blood and pain in his muscles. The weight sloughed off him nearly by the hour. This was a killing.”

“And why did you say nothing, Maester Colemon?” prompts Sansa.

The maester’s eyes dart. “Lord Baelish commanded me to keep Lord Arryn’s ailment a secret. To ensure no rumor of the Vale’s weakness would spread.”

Sansa nods. “The Winged Brotherhood can attest to Sweetrobin’s death.” Harry Hardyng gives a terse nod. “Lord Baelish wished to use me to seize power in the Vale. I would marry Ser Harry and later reveal my true identity as a Stark of Winterfell. He then meant for me to rally the Knights of the Vale and take back my birthright. But help came. Winter came. Now I shall go home on my own terms, to aid in a fight the likes of which Westeros has never seen. Whether you believe me or not is for you to decide — if you wish for Lord Baelish to maintain his position as Lord Protectorate, I will not stop you. But you will never have the blessing of the Starks.”

Jaime thinks there ought to be dead silence after something like that, but Littlefinger shoves past Harry the Heir, holding up his hands. “My people, none of this tale is true. Lord Robert was like a son to me —”

Sansa’s voice cuts: “As I was a daughter to you?” Tears glint in her eyes, but you could mistake them for shards of ice.

Now the hall is silent as a tomb: nobody in attendance particularly wants to speak for Littlefinger, but they are unsure what to do now. There is power to the Stark name, as there is power to the Lannisters and the Tyrells. When a wolf howls, the sheep tremble. And Baelish knows it. 

He begins to back up, feeling the room start to take notice of the stench of guilt. “I deny these accusations.” A swipe of the tongue around the lips. “Treason...murder — I am not capable of it! If you insist on pursuing this crusade, Lady Alayne, I must demand a trial by combat.”

“I thought you would.” Sansa nearly smiles. “I know my champion, I think.” She looks over her shoulder, and from the mass of watching servants comes the hulking man with the bread cart — unmistakably the Hound. “Sandor Clegane will fight on my behalf; have you anyone to fight on yours?”

Littlefinger stares at the sea of pale faces. Which of these knights, who turn their faces or study their boots when he looks on them, would survive a duel with the Hound? That red-black crag of a face, hands large enough to wield a greatsword in one palm: even in his best days, Jaime would not have taken such a wager lightly. 

He would have won it, though. Brienne eyes him sidelong; she knows exactly what he is thinking. 

No man or bleeding heart wench comes forward. The Hound catches Littlefinger by the collar of his tunic, hoisting him easily as a kitten fated for drowning. 

“How will you dispose of him, Lady Stark?” Jaime calls.

Sansa Stark beside the Hound, the silver direwolf at Catelyn Stark’s shoulder: Jaime thinks he will remember them the same. The only question is that age-old bother — which is which? 

The little she-wolf smiles. “I want to see him fly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm proud of this chapter! apologies for the irregular updating schedule — life is getting busy again — but i will continue to write this as steadily as i can. thank you all for reading along and providing such wonderful feedback.
> 
> you may have noticed by now, this is as much a winds of winter substitute as it is a jb fic. jaime is my favorite character in the series, and it intrigues me to no end to watch events play out from his eyes. i also dearly love sansa and despise how the show made her into a block of ice so! i shall be remedying that. to the best of my ability.
> 
> things are heating up in the next chapter: jaime's reuniting with tommen (who you'll notice he thinks of several times in this chapter), brienne's got a new charge, and they finally get to return to jaime's tent. oh, and winterfell, too.


	15. Chapter 15

A battlefield mothers many a hideous sight. Overeager crows tugging at the intestines of the dying, men’s skulls splintered like birds’ eggs after a spring storm, destriers’ wine-dark blood spilling and spilling until the sward looks more like a bog. Their teeth clack desperately at your ankles as you slog through the scarlet mud, sounding like the clattering skeletons they will soon become. In all likelihood, you slit some of their mighty throats yourself. You tore your enemy’s helm from his head and grinned into brown eyes beneath a boyish flop of hair and made strangers of each half of his skull. If you are Jaime Lannister, you crushed one half beneath your boot, because you had the time and the fire in your blood. 

He has often felt like a mother on the battlefield. Remember again the young brown eyes; remember how they pleaded with yours for a breathtaking moment before the end. Study enough men in the reflection of your blade, and you will notice that their whitened lips purse in the moments before you finish it, forming the shape of a word that they haven’t the time to finish. 

_Mother_ , they would wail, if you allowed it. _Mother’s mercy_ — though that is not the same thing. Jaime Lannister grants their dying wish every time. Mercy, that is. He has caught many men-turned-boys as they slump and bleed into his breast, sobbing for their mothers. 

He was surprised to find the same image in the birthing bed. Men shudder at birth: perhaps this is why. The raw, bloody, screaming babe tugged steaming and miserable into this world. Perhaps the men are looking around for the crows. 

It is an ugly sight. One wishes childbirth were immaculate; the babes should be soft pink or brown, serene against the smiling mother’s breast. 

It is something you have to see to understand: the foulness of birth, the loveliness of death.

Jaime held Tommen only once as an infant. In secret, away even from Cersei’s eyes. He had simply been curious. The lad was quiet even as a babe, a few curls of blonde hair dusting the forehead above eyes that were not yet green. Jaime poked at his son’s skull, found it slightly squishy, and shuddered. Such a crude, prevenient creature

He wondered what Tywin thought when he held Jaime in his arms. If he ever did.

He reflects on all of this for no particular reason other than that the Mountains of the Moon induce suffocating, frigid boredom without Brienne’s company. 

The wench rides slightly behind, ensnared in conversation with Sansa Stark. It strikes Jaime that he has never seen Brienne speak this long to another woman, which kindles a peculiar sorrow in his chest. He wonders what they have to say to each other. Podrick rides alongside the women, and the Hound stalks a ways behind, glowering or muttering or whatever he does when he is alone. 

Hyle Hunt leads the party, driving his shaggy gray mount through drift after drift. Lanks of chestnut hair are frozen to the back of his neck. A true hedge knight, he has shaken this — for him — fruitless endeavor off his back and turned his gaze to the next one. What that might be, Jaime cannot be arsed to care. He is happy enough to let Hunt lead. It allows him to sit back in the saddle and imagine all the ways an unremarkable face might be rearranged to look memorable, though perhaps not in a way that would please any would-be suitors. 

The wench would not be pleased to hear his thoughts. Every time Jaime so much as offers Hunt an affable smile, she gives him a look that is somewhere between embarrassed and threatening. He senses that she wants to put the whole bloody Brienne the Beauty affair behind her. It has been some time now, after all. So Jaime keeps his mouth mostly shut. 

Really, it seems that no one has any interest in speaking to him. Every so often, he feels Sansa’s eyes on his back and hopes Brienne is not saying something along the lines of, And then the Kingslayer removed your mother’s putrifying head easier than plucking a strawberry off a cake. Stoneheart had half a smile on her lips. He can’t remember if he told Brienne that. 

Then he curls his lip in disgust at himself and allows that old Lannister mantra about lions and sheep to clout him around the ears. He hardly cares what Sansa Stark thinks of him. If she has half her mother’s bitterness and her father’s contempt, then accepting help from the Kingslayer will have chafed her ivory skin. It is more that he shudders to imagine what Brienne might be saying about him. He guesses it is likely not some flattering platitudes about the gold of his hair or the quickness of his smile. 

No, this is Brienne, which means whatever she says, it is the truth. He does not know if that is better or worse than a lie.

The lot of them are bone-weary by the time they approach the crossroads. Jaime and Brienne have tossed the whole story of the Wall, Aegon, the Dragon Queen, Euron Greyjoy stealing a dragon, and Winterfell across the fire. Sansa’s determination to reach Winterfell only seems to grow with every word out of Jaime’s mouth. Clegane spits that the whole thing is preposterous — an army’s worth of horse shit, is how he puts it — but when Brienne asks if he will leave them at the Crossroads, he grumbles that he will follow the little bird. The little bird is Sansa. Jaime wonders aloud to Brienne if Clegane has not seen the she-wolf’s teeth. 

Pod and Hyle have little trouble believing that the dead can walk — a dead woman hanged them, after all. No one speaks Stoneheart’s name in front of Sansa, but Hunt smirks at Jaime across the feathering flame, tilting his head so Jaime can see the scabrous imitation of a smile wrapped around his neck. 

Blood clumsy and thick on his fingers, Podrick screaming, Hunt shouting for Jaime to hoist Brienne into his lap. Jaime had refused, shoved Hunt from the saddle, and pulled Brienne's limp form into his arms with the strength of near-insanity. Podrick helped tie the reins to his golden hand. The other clamped a soaked, useless cloth to Brienne’s emptying stomach… 

“Are you all right?” Her big warm hand is on his shoulder, questioning. Sapphire eyes almost silver in the moonlight.

He nods. He was somewhere else, is all. Everyone is staring at him, though Sansa’s eyes dart politely when he lifts his chin. 

Hunt had been in the midst of announcing that he would depart at the Crossroads. “I will be sure to toss a coin to the singers who make music of your valorous deaths,” he says, doffing the hood of his cloak. Podrick whitens.

“Save it,” Jaime replies, waving a hand to dispel Brienne’s pointed stare. “Gods know a coin or two can buy a bowl o’ brown in Flea Bottom for a starving sellsword. Assuming Aegon’s glorious rule hasn’t transformed Flea Bottom into a mouthful of white-washed manses.”

Hunt snorts. “According to you and the swordswench, there likely will not be a Flea Bottom when the dead men are done with you. No, I am sailing to Essos, across a warm sea, where I shall be a sworn sword for fretful merchants worried about swimming corpses.”

“My name is Brienne,” says Brienne mildly enough, but Jaime can tell that Hunt’s apathy scrapes her.

Is that how I looked to her once? he wonders. Is that how I looked when I scoffed at her gods-forsaken vows and imagined how the very sight of her would turn Cersei’s stomach? What a bloody fool I was. 

* * *

It is just over two weeks after leaving that Vale that they catch up to the Lannister foot, somewhere, Jaime estimates, between Greywater Watch and Moat Cailin. 

They hear the army miles before they see it: the voices of shouting men and whinnying horses flung south on the winter wind, ghosts shouting down the Kingsroad. Brienne lifts Pod, bundled round as a bear cub, onto her shoulders, and the boy spies a dark smudge in the distance, at the end of the brown-gray river of churned snow. 

Jaime had half feared that they would return to a force decimated by the heavy snows, but if any significant number of men has been lost he cannot see it as he rides into camp, the outriders who had come to meet them trumpeting his arrival. The light is dying, but some men leave their tents in the dim to cheer for their commander — despite him trailing a laughable excuse for the reinforcements he’d purported to recruit. Jaime turns his horse in a neat circle, waving, though he cannot help but think many of these men would disdain to discover that he had decamped to rescue a Stark. 

He dismounts outside his commander’s tent, which someone has run ahead to pitch, and ushers Sansa and the Hound inside. Brienne sticks her head in, then departs with Podrick to find him a place in the squires’ tents. 

Sansa folds her hands in front of her, eyeing the crimson-and-gold tent with mannerly distaste, as though she is considering how to broach the subject of redecorating. “It would be best if you lived among the serving girls until we get to Winterfell,” Jaime tells her. “I would rather not have it known that the last trueborn Stark marches in our company until we are somewhere you will be safe.” He didn’t tramp all the way to the Vale for nothing. 

“I...” Sansa wants to refuse — she is Lady Stark! — but she catches her tongue and nods. 

Jaime thinks he may pay for this later.

He turns to the Hound. “Do as you please —”

“Didn’t need your permission,” says Clegane.

Jaime rolls his eyes. “Just keep the details spare. I know how you like to ramble — you Cleganes are alike in that regard.”

The Hound glares hot enough to wither cleverer men. Jaime only smiles. He steps aside to allow the two of them to leave the tent, then sags bonelessly to his pallet. Outside, voices buzz below the wind. His men will want direction; there are reports to be made, he must talk to Ser Lucion Lannister, and Samwell Tarly is surely beside himself somewhere. He even wonders how Loras has fared in the cold. 

He rises to his feet — but whatever tasks anticipate him now must wait, for Brienne enters the tent followed by Tommen.

It has been short of a month, but Jaime could swear his son is taller. Tommen’s face is red and wind-burned as he peers from behind Brienne’s bulk. Jaime catches her eye for a moment, torn briefly between two jaws of duty. Then he nods, both to her and himself. 

“Brienne, would you mind filling in Ser Lucion on our failure to retrieve the Knights of the Vale? Have him update you on the march, too. Tell him I sent you.”

Brienne looks surprised, but she nods briskly and leaves. The tent is silent. 

Tommen inspects his feet. “Some of the boys said you weren’t coming back.”

“Well, I did.”

“I thought maybe you snuck back to be with Mother. Everyone found out that I’m a bastard, you know. Even before you left.” Tommen’s shoulders droop. “They said you had gone back to the Rock to be with her. Nobody wants a bastard.”

Jaime sighs. He knees in front of his son and tilts the round chin until they are eye to eye. “Plainly that wasn’t true, Tommen. Men lie. Boys lie even more. I stole you from King’s Landing to keep you safe, and I mean to keep you with me, wherever I may go.” He tries for a smile. “Do you know the knights’ vows, lad?” A shake of the head. “Part of it goes, _In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent_. And you are innocent, Tommen. It is no fault of yours that you are a bastard. The mistake is mine alone.” 

Bloody fool. He hadn’t meant to tell the boy that he was a mistake, even if that is the hard truth of it. That is no life for a boy, Brienne warned when she learned of his plan to smuggle Tommen from King’s Landing. A life on the run, in the shadows, _bastard_ spat at his feet by everyone from lords to dusty horse boys. 

My mistake. 

But Tommen only screws up his face and nods. “Ser Brienne said you wouldn’t leave me,” he says, like an afterthought. “She said you were only doing your duty as a true knight, and then you would be back. It was just, the squire boys kept saying that was a lie.”

Jaime closes his eyes briefly. Oh, lovely Brienne. What did I ever do for you to believe in me?

He stands and ruffles Tommen’s hair. Then, remembering Brienne and Podrick, he puts an arm around the lad and squeezes him. Tommen wraps his arms around Jaime’s leg and mutters something that sounds like an apology, but Jaime shakes his head.

“Go on, then,” he says roughly after a few moments. He nudges Tommen towards the opening of the tent and the boy goes trotting off in search of a bowl of stew and a crackling fire. 

Jaime’s phantom fingers twinge. His belly is empty, and after weeks of hard riding his pallet would feel like a featherbed, but he pushes his way out of the tent and into the snow.

He finds Brienne squatting beside a campfire with Loras Tyrell of all people. The boy’s ruined leg must be on the mend by now; at least, Jaime cannot smell its stench any longer. Swathed beneath so many gray pelts, and with his curling brown hair tucked under a hood, he almost would not have recognized Loras if not for his fair face. 

Jaime gives him a nod and sits on a stump stool beside Brienne. “I admit I had not imagined I would find you in this company, my lady.”

Brienne is drawing a whetstone across Oathkeeper’s black-and-red blade, though such a task is excessive for Valyrian steel. Jaime often does the same.

“Save you, Ser Loras wields the best sword I have ever crossed. He has agreed to help me shape up Podrick’s skills in the weeks to come. Considering the enemy that faces us….Pod needs all the help he can get.”

Loras sniffs. “I could beat you,” he says to Jaime. “Two hands or no, it makes no matter.”

“You’ll have to stand on that leg first,” says Jaime drily. There is an ash-hardened cane near Loras’s boots. He considers being irked that Brienne enlisted the boy’s help before his, but Loras looks brighter about the eyes than Jaime has seen him since before snapping his leg, so he holds his tongue. Renly always said he was the truest of knights, Brienne had told him. We all like to be needed. 

He turns to Brienne. “Walk with me, will you?”

She hears that strange thing in his voice and frowns, but nods and follows him away from camp, leaving Loras alone by the fire. 

“That was a good thing you did for the boy,” says Jaime, stamping through the untrodden snow beyond the farthest tents. His stump aches in this weather. Like an old man.

Brienne follows a bit behind. “I told it true. Gods willing, he will be a good teacher. I worry for Podrick. And…” She sighs. “Loras was Renly’s love, I believe. This was the last I could do for him.”

Renly. His kingship would have done for the realm what gild does for cheap plate. Jaime cannot say a word about loving wrongly, though. 

“You told Tommen that I wouldn’t leave for Cersei,” he says instead. He had not intended to bring them to any particular place in these snowy woods, but his rambling footsteps have stumbled upon what looks like the ruin of a small sept. Only the Maiden remains standing in the ring of stones that encased the original Seven; the rest have tumbled over forward or backward. Small stones, perhaps opals or rose quartz, must have sat in the eyes of these gray faces once, but only sunken sockets remain.

Jaime brushes snow out of the Crone’s ear and sits. Light my way, hag.

Brienne towers before him, taken aback by his statement and odd manner. “He worried when he heard we were leaving. He thought you were angry with him.”

“I was.”

“I know. But I knew your intentions, too. You would not go back to her when you had given Winterfell your promise.”

Jaime manages a wry smile. “Is that all?"

“I don’t understand.”

“I suppose the end of the world is a worthy enough cause to stay my course. You are right, I would not stray from that.” Now his knee is bouncing: a habit he thought his father had clouted out of him decades ago. “I thank you for your faith in me.”

Brienne chews her lip. “You believed in me, once — more than once. I have seen fit to do the same. I think — I think that is what you and I do.”

“Some sacred bond of knighthood, we have.” He does not intend to sound dismissive, but gods if that isn’t his instinct. Deny, deny, deny. But the pit is before him now, reeking of bear and fear and sweat-damp silk. Pink silk — he will always remember that. He’d said, I dreamed of you, and the pink clashed with the blotchy red blush on her cheeks.

“Brienne,” he begins, hoping the whole story is not written in his eyes, “if I tell you something, do you promise to believe it?”

She is instantly wary. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s not like that. Sit, will you?” He cannot bear her looming over him while he says this.

She sits beside him on the Crone. “If I overstepped by speaking to Tommen...”

“No. Nothing like that. You haven’t done anything. The opposite, really – well, you haven’t done nothing, I suppose, but —”

“Jaime.” Brienne is fighting a smile. “You sound madder than usual.”

He laughs, somewhat eased. “Excuse me. And excuse me for what I am about to say, for I fear it will be neither as elegant or grand as you deserve. But I mean every word of it. Brienne, I —” And then the moment swallows Jaime Lannister whole: the Maiden peering over Brienne’s shoulder, her gloved hands so close to his, her wide pink lips parted beneath a guarded expression. Like she is a rabbit and he is a fox crouched behind a bush. The irony, Jaime, supposes, is that they are both rabbits. He stamps his feet. “Gods, it’s bloody cold.”

It will only get worse if he does not speak now. “Fine. Brienne. Wench. Believe me when I say I love you, and have loved you. Would that you could hear these words from a better man, but I suppose that is the way of these things. Do you remember when I said I dreamed of you? You were the last light left to me in that dark place — and you have been a thousand times since. I tried to see a way out. When you left to find Sansa. When I stole you from the Quiet Isle. When you took the white. Every time we ended back where we bloody began: you marching along and me trailing after you. I cannot promise to love you well, Brienne. I haven’t any delicacy left in me, only fire, but if you’ll have me, you will be the vainest woman in Westeros by the time I am done with you. I swear it. By the old gods and the new,” he adds, for they are in a sept, or what remains of one, and he hopes pious words will lower the eyebrows of these crumbling gods.

Brienne looks at him a long time. Jaime thinks she might geld him. He thinks she might weep, but perhaps his stinging eyes just want company.

Then she swallows hard and says,“Words are wind.”

A slow smile crawls across Jaime’s face. “Indeed,” he agrees, and kisses her.

He kisses her, and the fact that it has been coming a long time does not make her lips any less warm against his, does not make her hands any less strong where they fist in his cloak. “Brienne,” he whispers, because he never knew when to shut his mouth, but her lips are so close and she swallows her name back into the mouth that first told it to him. You will call me Brienne, she had said, and now he thinks, I will call you anything if it makes you mine. 

“Brienne,” he repeats when she finally pulls away. The eyeless maiden over her shoulder. “Brienne, I don’t deserve anything you have to give to me.”

“Now you think to be self-deprecating.” Brienne puts a hesitant hand on his cheek, then pulls it away. 

“No.”

“What?”

“No, don’t you do that, wench. You promised to believe me.”

“I never promised anything.” Brienne stands and begins pacing in the snow. Her hand drifts to the sword he gave her; perhaps she plans on gelding him after all. “You cannot decide what you want. You say that you love me, then that you do not _deserve_ —”

“I never said I wanted anything.” Jaime is on his feet now too. 

Brienne pauses in her pacing. “You don't want —”

“ _No_. I mean, yes. I only…” The conversation starts to feel the way letters looked to him as a child: a jumble of sounds and symbols that surely would mean something if he could only be right in the head. 

A horse whinnies in the distance. They both startle. To the west, Jaime can see the glow of campfires. His duty lies there: Tommen sleeps in a pile of squires, Sam Tarly gnaws his fingernails over Jon Snow’s last message, men wonder if it is their imagination that the days are growing shorter. He could find his way back there alone and face it all — and he will if he must. 

But he would rather not do it alone.

Jaime edges closer, catches one of Brienne’s hands in his. “I am a golden fool who could never control his heart, and I would rather not resist myself for any longer. It has been terribly trying.” He scrapes out a laugh. “I know it isn’t good enough. But it is yours if you would have it: all of my heart and all of me. That’s all.”

“You stupid man.” Brienne squeezes his hand like she wants to break it. The scar on her cheek contorts; her face is fragile as a flame. “How could you think — how could you not know? How could you not know my heart all this time?”

Jaime gapes. By the gods, he had hoped, but he never truly believed that she felt the same. Trust Brienne to be furious in her confession. “Do you mean —”

“Surely you must know.” She swipes at her eyes. “I stayed in King’s Landing for you. It felt...it felt too right, and I knew it couldn’t be true. I wanted to stop you, and myself. I took the white and I thought you would hate me. Maybe you did. But I couldn’t help myself, Jaime. It was the way you look at me. I had never loved anyone who looked at me before.”

Now she blushes furiously, but a curious brightness comes into her eyes. She is going to reach for her sword and remove his insides and put an end to this madness. She is going to laugh at his sagging mouth and say it was all a jape. She is going to — kiss him.

Oh. Jaime circles an arm around her waist, pulling her closer with a gasp, and her hands are warm on his face and in his hair and he laughs against her lips. 

“What?”

“Nothing.” Jaime kisses her scarred cheek. Gods, how he has wanted to do that. “We are fools staring each other in the face, is all. Sun and moon, always circling, never meeting.”

Brienne shoves at him. “I suppose you see yourself as the sun.”

“Naturally.” He bares his teeth, offers his hand. “Lead me home, ser.”

* * *

If those final two weeks’ grueling march to Winterfell find Jaime Lannister in incongruous cheer, then he can only shrug and attribute it to his dauntless commander’s spirit. If the ice storms and the rapidly shortening days and the black frozen corpses left behind by Stannis Baratheon cannot subdue the warm, viscid, insolent thing beating at his chest, then who is he to complain? You’d be amazed at the things a man can overlook when he has a woman to hold each night. 

The dragon, he will admit, does catch him off guard. Speaking honestly: he nearly pisses his pants when the hawk on the northern horizon grows steadily larger and larger until it becomes a great black shadow with two ruby eyes and a mouthful of white blades. The Lannister host lets out a shriek that ripples from the vanguard to the pack mules slogging at the rear until the army is screaming with one throat. 

“ _Hold_ ,” Jaime shouts. “Keep your places.” His instinct is to draw his sword, but his horse is bucking beneath him and he can’t hold the thing with one bloody hand, and a sword may as well be a needle against the approaching monster. 

The dragon pauses mid-flight, rearing in the air not unlike Jaime’s horse and flapping its wings upright like sails, blowing snow and icy wind in Jaime’s face. It opens its mouth and Jaime thinks, I cannot die by fire, but the beast only lets out an earth-shaking roar. The horses scream, someone retches, but there are no flames.

Brienne reins up beside him. Together, they tilt their heads back and watch the dragon soar over the army; it circles, gaining altitude until its vast wings blanket the sun. This many men must make a curious sight, a dark smear against the snow. They wait in silence now: mice beneath the snow, breath freezing in their throats. 

It is black as a nightmare, black as a pit. Jaime thinks of the ebony skulls of this beast’s cousins beneath the Red Keep: they are worse than sightless. No amount of leering torchlight could make them look alive. To observe those skulls was to doubt whether they had ever seen at all. The smallest of them — the last — could fit in Jaime’s palm. 

He squints against the stark winter sun. You can just make out a net of scarlet veins within those black wings. From here, they look like hairs, or maybe embroidery on a woman’s gown — life-pumping patterns. 

Jaime thinks, anything can be killed.

“Look there.” Brienne points. There are two figures hunched over the dragon’s back, one smaller than the other. Jaime glimpses a flash of pale hair.

They see the dragon only once more before they reach Winterfell, and then only at a distance. Jaime presses Samwell Tarly for information, but the boy knows little more of the situation than he described at Casterly Rock.

“The last I heard from Jon was at the Rock,” says Sam helplessly. He speaks in between stutters and over the wailing wind. It is late afternoon, by Jaime’s estimation, but already the sun glares balefully at eye-level. They will have to stop the march soon. “Daenerys Targaryen is there with her dragons — two of them, anyway. They haven’t seen Euron Greyjoy since he stole off with the third.”

How in the seven accursed hells does one steal a dragon? Jaime guides his horse around a jagged patch of ice. “How does the Dragon Queen like the taste of living in a castle ruled by a bastard? How does Stannis, for that matter?”

“Jon didn’t exactly say. I think — hope — the three of them have enough to worry about driving off the raids that come on the coldest nights.” Sam shudders at the next blast of wind. “Stannis’s force is terribly depleted, you know. They were unprepared to march in these conditions in the first place, and the Freys killed no small number of them in battle.”

Oh, that. According to Sam — which really means according to Jon Snow — Hosteen Frey, unknowingly the new Lord of the Crossing, had made to crush Stannis and his men from behind and join with the Boltons at Winterfell. Stannis had almost no horses left to him; his men’s feet blackened in their boots by the hour, and there was no food to speak of, except the kind you would rather not mention anyway. The approaching Freys spied the fire atop Stannis’s watchtower from afar, a low-hanging sun amid the blinding snow. Hosteen Frey spurred his men forward...and the ground split beneath their feet. An icy lake swallowed the Frey vanguard, and what remained of Stannis’s force took the rest by utter surprise from both flanks. All the while, a weirwood tree burned at the center of the lake. The northerners turned on the Boltons when they saw Stannis at their gates. Jaime wonders if Roose Bolton’s face could be made any paler by death.

He says, “Which god do you suppose is most likely to stop the three of them taking my head? I want to make sure I say the right prayers.” There are reasonable justifications for each. 

Sam cannot hide his doubt when he says, “None of them would do that, my lord, ser.” 

Jaime wagers that Daenerys will be the one to do it.

* * *

When Winterfell crouches before them, he cannot help but recall the last time he approached these walls.

“We rode for months straight up the Kingsroad,” he tells Brienne. “A royal pace, if you understand my meaning. We had camp followers and singers and fools and Robert’s favorite cooks from court. The Starks must have seen our banners coming for miles. Cersei and Tyrion preferred to ride in the carriages, but I rode all day, hunting and racing with the men. In the evenings we tested swords against one another.” Really, it wasn’t much of a test for Jaime, but he enjoyed it all the same. 

“Fate leads us on strange paths,” says Brienne. 

Jaime touches her hand where it grips Oathkeeper in its scabbard. “Shall we?”

They are four afoot: Jaime, Brienne, Sansa Stark, and Samwell Tarly. The rest of the army wait half a league away from the outer wall, where Winterfell’s scouts bid them remain while _your lot_ — meaning Jaime — treats with whom Jaime can only assume are the numerous lords of Winterfell. 

The crowd that waits for them inside the courtyard might be mistaken for a gray shelf of cloud squatting idle on the horizon. The kind that brings with it a persistent yet noncommittal rain. It takes Jaime a moment to discern familiar faces, but when he does, he almost wishes he hadn’t.

There is Jon Snow, taller and more raddled than when Jaime last saw him, garbed head-to-toe in black furs save for the clasp in the shape of a white wolf that holds his cloak. His face splinters into a smile when he catches sight of Sam, but his cheeks are colorless where everyone else’s are red with cold. Stannis Baratheon looms stern and skeletal to his left, and that silent white direwolf large enough to rest its head on Jaime’s shoulder to his right.

“Welcome,” rasps Jon, but he does not draw the eye like the girl beside Stannis, who alone seems to entice the faltering sun. She is silver where the rest are gray, and even from here Jaime can see the purple of her eyes. A child, he thinks, surprised though he promised himself he wouldn’t be. Only a girl, with a girl’s round cheeks and slanted nose and slender arms and a face that should be called pretty before it is called beautiful. So this is the Dragon Queen. 

Some part of him had expected her father’s dynamic madness, but what he sees reminds him more suddenly of Rhaegar. And at her side, small as a child…

Jaime takes an involuntary step forward, unsure if he is going to crush his brother’s skull or embrace him. Tyrion’s beard has grown wild and yellow, his curling hair longer even than Jaime’s. His mismatched eyes dart over Jaime’s shoulder for a heartbeat before meeting his gaze. Expecting Cersei. 

Daenerys Targaryen has begun to speak, and Sam is trotting over to clap Jon Snow’s shoulder, but Jaime cannot take his eyes off his brother. He almost doesn’t care that Tyrion put a quarrel in Tywin Lannister’s stomach: what galls him is that his little brother never had to smell the rot. A man who kills his father should know how the corpse smelled. And how it smiled. 

Jaime takes another step forward, but whatever he means to do is interrupted when Sansa, waiting unsure behind him, suddenly gasps, “ _Bran_?”

Jaime’s blood freezes. Brienne sucks in a breath. His head snaps around and finds the slim, red-haired figure sitting in a strange chair apart from everyone else. “Bran,” cries Sansa again, rushing to his side, and then Jon recognizes his sister and there is too much commotion for Jaime’s pounding head, but throughout it all, Bran Stark’s glare never wavers from his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's what we've all been waiting for!! why now, you ask? why, after all this time, did jaime finally pull the trigger?
> 
> some thoughts jam will never articulate but that i will: it has everything to do with his conversation with tommen. jaime is learning how it feels to take responsibility for the people he loves — as he recalls at the beginning of this chapter, he wasn't always there for tommen, but he is trying to be now. and when he finds out that brienne was confident enough in his honor that she promised he wouldn't return to cersei, jaime realizes the name of the wall in his heart and hurdles it. his tiny little brain goes, "oh my god, she's right, i WONT go back to cersei. and i dont want to! and i know exactly why!" and so: kiss. poor brienne doesn't want to let herself believe it, but, again going back to the convo with tommen, we see that she has gotten over any fear that jam wants to return to cersei. so she lets herself believe — though we're far from done with her insecurities. 
> 
> anyway, let me also say that i'm sorry for the lengthier gaps between updates. college has Begun again, so my time staring at my computer screen is dedicated to other things during the day. not to worry, though. the early chapters of this fic were written in pre-pandemic school, so have no concerns about this being abandoned! we are very much in the thick of things.
> 
> ALSO this is a side note but i want to shoutout tumblr user @ knifeears for making such wonderful jb art, a lot of which helped me picture the kiss in this chapter! her art is amazing and makes my heart turn into mush.


	16. Chapter 16

Jaime asks, “Is this the part where I state my apologies?”

“This is the part, says Daenerys Targaryen, “where you convince me not to remove your head. It is the part where you try, at least.”

Tyrion, standing behind Daenerys’s seat at the long stone table in Winterfell’s Great Keep, really ought to shuffle his feet, or at least have the grace to look awkward at the image of Jaime’s head rolling, but his mismatched eyes only flicker. The golden hand pinned to his doublet winks. 

I had one first, thinks Jaime.

They are all of them gathered in the Great Keep, in the room where Ned Stark once held court. Everything is as long and gray and dim as Jaime remembers it, though now the faces of the Stark children have been made to match. The five of them are assembled at the end of the table, regarding Jaime with varying degrees of animosity. Sansa is most sympathetic: meaning she at least does not appear to have an appetite for his flesh. How at home she looks in a lady’s seat! Catelyn would be proud. 

Then there are Arya and Rickon, both inexplicably alive and explicably murderous, though their chairs are too high for their booted feet to touch the ground. Rickon cannot be older than five; his mane of red hair hangs matted as a sheep’s pelt past his waist, and he clicks his sharp child’s teeth together when Jaime stares at him. Arya sits long-faced and silent, far more sedate than Jaime remembers. The sword at her waist is slim enough that he could almost break it over his knee. Her pale eyes, narrow and strange, meet Jaime’s for too long. 

He remembers Ned Stark riding the length of the throne room, his horse tracking round medallions of king’s blood. 

Jon Snow could almost be Ned Stark on that damnable day as he sits there, if Ned had been paler in the face and perpetually hunched beneath a heap of black hair. The tiredness is there, though: that world-weary scowl that you can imagine affixed Ned Stark’s face from the moment the maester wrenched him from Lady Lyrarra’s womb. Another man might wonder that a boy of six-and-ten could wear such a scowl, but Jaime, as it happens, was a Kingsguard at six-and-ten. 

And Bran. The name of his sin. Willow-thin beneath a mountain of pelts wrapped around his shoulders. Shaggy red hair and faraway blue eyes, the kind of eyes that might belong to a stranger in your dreams.

This is Jaime’s trial, or as near to one as he is like to get in this company. All the highborn folk in Winterfell are gathered here, standing in a brown and gray cluster at his back. Loras is probably around somewhere, and the Hound. And Brienne, though he would rather she missed this. Tommen, at least, has been sent off to find a cot with Podrick. 

Jaime says, “I think you overestimate my willingness to beg. Your grace.” Brienne will be cross at him for that one, but he will not grovel before a queen without a crown. 

Daenerys arches a single slim brow. “Oh? Shall we conclude things, then?”

“If you wish.”

She is taken aback. You spend so many years envisioning the man who slit your father’s throat, tracked his blood up the steps to the Iron Throne, and he does not seem particularly bothered by threat of execution. 

Jon Snow speaks. “You have brought us your army, my lord. For that, you have our gratitude. We are in your debt.” 

Daenerys’s mouth twitches at _we_. “Your own brother assured me you would not follow through. He insisted on seeing your army for himself.”

Jaime eyes Tyrion. Now at least, his brother finds something engrossing in the stones beneath his feet. “Perhaps you ought to keep better council, your grace.”

The Dragon Queen does not deign to reply to that, but her expression turns vaguely amused, and her violet eyes say, Perhaps. 

Beside her, Stannis speaks. “We can agree or disagree on the principle of the thing, but my brother Robert pardoned the Kingslayer nigh on twenty years ago. Justice has been done. Anything else is vengeance.”

“Your brother,” clips Daenerys, “was a usurper.” 

Ah, this. Jaime resists the urge to glance over his shoulder for Brienne. So much for unity amongst the living. We haven’t even been here a full day. 

Stannis would have made a good Stark, Jaime thinks, watching that sunless face grow even more pinched. Appropriately dour. Brienne might have liked him, in another life. 

Stannis never cared much for Robert. The only person at court more incensed than Cersei by Robert’s penchant for drinking and hunting and fucking whores was his own brother. But it is, as he would say, the principle of the thing. Robert is Stannis’s claim to that seven-times-damned throne. 

Jon Snow rubs a hand over his face. “Your grace” — he must be talking to them both — “I do not see how I can in good conscience allow the man who brought us the reinforcements we need to be executed. My lord father would never have stood for it. Not in this hall.”

“This is no longer Eddard Stark’s hall,” says Daenerys.

“No, it is mine,” agrees Bran Stark.

All eyes swing to the boy. A king and a queen sit at the long stone table, but even they fall silent. Bran lets a smile wobble on his lips, then gets his face under control. 

“He isn’t supposed to be executed,” he says loudly. What an odd choice of words. “Not by you, at least.” Jon frowns. 

“That’s all I know,” Bran finishes, drumming his fingers on the side of his chair. He looks suddenly sheepish.

The Starks look at each other, then at the two Your Graces. 

“Lord Lannister helped me escape the Vale,” says Sansa after a moment. “I think Jon is right. Father would not want him dead. Not now. Not unless he gives us a reason.”

Another reason, she probably meant to say. 

Jaime catches Sansa’s eye, and she nods almost imperceptibly. He is nearly abashed, and has to look at Daenerys to keep his composure. 

The Dragon Queen wants badly to say that it matters not whose hall this is — last she studied a map, Winterfell is in one of the Seven Kingdoms that belong to her by blood. But she does not say that. Instead, she asks in a softer voice, “Was my father truly mad?”

Jaime sucks in a breath. The watching crowd murmurs.

“If you could have seen the look in his eyes, you would never want to sit that throne, your grace.”

Tyrion huffs. The hall grows hushed but for shuffling feet and ice shards clicking against the windows. 

“I think, Kingslayer, that you overestimate my eagerness to execute you,” says Daenerys at last. “I shall not. But do not give me another reason.”

Jaime comes close to smiling. He is supposed to give his eternal thanks for her clemency, now, but he only bows and tries to stifle the relief in his heart. 

“One thing before you go,” says Jon. He glances at Bran. “You should know that your sister bent the knee to Aegon on the Lannisters’ behalf. Aegon is marrying Arianne Martell in a sennight. Cersei will be there.” 

Jaime pauses. “I suppose she thought to make me a traitor.”

“She has. Aegon will style her the lady of House Lannister, most like. You will be disinherited. Tyrion too.”

“Pity. My father always wanted to do that himself.” 

Jon cannot avoid the bemusement that splatters his face. “You don’t want Casterly Rock?” He is a bastard — what he wouldn’t give to inherit his own chunk of stone.

Jaime shrugs. “If all you say about our enemy is true, I in all likelihood will not be returning to the Rock. And if it does happen that I am in need of a home to go back to, I have somewhere in mind.” He offers a smile. “You forget, I have been a traitor before.”

“And yet you have kept your head,” mutters Daenerys. 

Jaime laughs.

Brienne meets him in the corridor afterward, when the last of the onlookers have trickled out. The Starks stayed behind to huddle amongst themselves. Jaime spreads his hands in mock celebration. Brienne scrunches her mouth and hands him Widow’s Wail, whose lion’s head pommel he’d thought best to keep out of sight on this occasion. 

“You did not show her much respect,” Brienne says. She crosses her arms. Accusing eyes.

Jaime’s mouth sags. “Don’t tell me you’re taken with her.”

Brienne raises her eyebrows. “Are you not?” 

Well, somewhat. He does not trust the Dragon Queen as far as he could throw those beasts of hers, but there is something alluring about her. She has that thing, the thing that Rhaegar had. Jaime imagines a silver coin flipping on itself and shakes his head to stave off a shiver. “She knows when to show mercy,” he says with a shrug. “Her father did not.”

The air outside the Great Keep wallops them in the chest. It was cold the last time Jaime visited Winterfell, but this is something different. This cold feels alive, baleful. Jaime can already sense that the memory of it will not be fast in leaving his bones. Darkness falls in the space of a breath here, and the stars are already out and glaring white and wicked. They walk past the sept and into the courtyard, where armored men squelch between bonfires atop the churned and muddy ground. All around: boys shoveling snow, teams of men hacking branches into stakes, women fletching arrows beneath snow-heavy awnings. 

“Did you notice,” says Jaime, “that Jon Snow knew a good deal about the happenings in King’s Landing?”

“A royal marriage would hardly be kept secret.”

“No. Only, Sam told me the only messages they receive here come in and out of Barrowtown. That’s where he got the last word from Jon while we were at the Rock. He must have written to tell them of our coming, but he can’t have been the one to tell of Aegon’s marriage or Cersei’s submission.”

Brienne glances sideways. “They could have a man in King’s Landing.” 

“They could. But how many ships are traveling north on these seas?” Jaime scratches his beard. It wants trimming. 

Brienne turns in the direction of the guardhouse. The castle is crammed with fighting men and more than a few smallfolk, and Jaime has spotted men housed everywhere from the kennels to the Great Hall. Many of the Lannister host have found beds in the guardhouse. 

He catches Brienne by the arm.

“Come with me,” he says, tugging. “They’ve given me chambers in the guest house.”

“I cannot. I should stay with the men.”

Cannot or should not? “There will be a fire. A real bed and all the blankets a delicate wench could want.” He raises his eyebrows. “And me.”

Brienne snorts. “You needn’t try to convince me. I would like to stay with you, but…” She glances around, as though the darkness might overhear. “It would not be proper.”

“Proper?” Jaime laughs. “Brienne, you slept in my tent from Casterly Rock to this wretched place.”

“ _S_ _lept_ only. It is different in a camp. Here, we are in genteel company. This is a castle. I cannot — it would stain my honor.” In her eyes is the implicit plea: honor is all I have. Jaime longs for the power to cut through untruths with a sword.

He twists his mouth. “I would _never_ force myself —”

“Of course I know that, you fool.” Brienne glares. Then she sighs, a white puff of air whose warmth brushes Jaime’s cheeks. “You are not a woman. Nor a woman such as me. You would not understand.”

Jaime tries not to scowl. “As you will, Brienne.”

The look she gives him is not accusatory, but she touches his hand briefly and leaves all the time. He stands there alone in the yellow, liquid heat from the bonfires until the light sears his vision and he goes in search of his empty bed. 

It is not that he does not understand. No man could spend his life at court and remain ignorant of the things said about women who so much as make eyes at a man over supper. Cersei used to walk her fingers down Jaime’s chest and say that a woman in love is a whore, but a man at a brothel is only a man. Her nails were sharp and pricked his skin. 

Of course, there were also Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moonboy for all Tyrion knows. How blind he was. 

Perhaps I ought to thank Tyrion, Jaime thinks, unstrapping his golden hand and tossing it to the floor. It only took him a breath to ruin my life, but who knows if I would have rebuilt it without him. Then he sneers at himself and shakes his head and falls into a dreamless sleep.

Next day, Podrick Payne comes banging on Jaime’s door the morning after they arrive and blurts a breathless message from Brienne: the Blackfish is here. Oh? Doing what? Podrick shrugs. Eating something steaming and gray.

Brienne probably meant the message as a warning, but Jaime takes it as an invitation to loosen his sword in its scabbard while he treks to the Great Hall to break his fast. Last he was here, he strode between the center tables and up to the dais as though he had inherited it long ago and was only now getting around to inspecting what had been left to him. The serving wenches paused their pouring when they saw him; Ned Stark’s retainers craned their necks to glimpse the Kingslayer’s golden sword, entertaining fantasies of meeting him in the yard. Those were the days that men would shout over each other to tell the tale of how Ser Jaime Lannister beat them bloody without ever displacing the smile from his lips. 

He finds himself a bowl of hot oats — steaming and gray — and some salted meat that might be elk and slides in next to Brienne at the long spruce table farthest from the dais. The wench does not look up from disappearing her meal with fastidious bites, but she muddles through a mouthful, “I told Pod to warn you off.”

“That is where I sat when last I was here,” Jaime ignores her. He points. The dais is vacant now but for young Rickon Stark and a grizzled older fellow who Jaime has seen at the boy’s heels. Rickon feeds a strip of meat to the black shadow of a direwolf at his feet.

Brienne squints: is this supposed to mean something? Actually, Jaime intends it to impress her, but the scowl she gives him rather evokes a mother gifted a cold and muddy frog. 

“Jaime,” she says in an undertone, “have you forgotten that Brynden Tully wants you dead?” A furtive glance across the room.

“In such a place as this, he shall have to come up with a more creative method of getting my attention.” 

Brienne’s mouth thins. Jaime wants to kiss her, but she mislikes when he japes about his own death. “He has better reason than some of the others,” she mutters. Jaime laughs. A few faces turn. Not Tully’s. Jaime has half an eye on his silver head across the room.

Brienne says, “You cannot kill him.”

She moves his fingers off the hilt of his sword. The oats are cooling before him. 

Jaime relents, dropping his jocund air with a sigh. “Do you know how it is that he is here?”

“Garlan Tyrell sent the remaining Brotherhood to the Wall after he recaptured Riverrun, do you not recall? The talk in the barracks is that Jon Snow led the surviving Night’s Watch brothers to Winterfell after the Wall collapsed. Most died.”

And now their watch is ended. “Tully has a proclivity for squeaking out alive,” says Jaime. He supposes, eyeing the black-clad figure, that Night’s Watch oath debars the Blackfish from killing him on the basis of house conflicts, but he does not know where the brothers stand on personal revenge. 

“I am not going to kill him,” he says, and finds that it is true. “I made a vow to the Tullys. I am not yet released from that vow.” 

He wants to add: she was already dead, it did not matter. But passing between him and Brienne he knows it would only sound like a plea. Forgive me, wench. She would have killed us both.

Brienne hears it anyway and favors him with a slight nod, and he knows that she understands. Would that Brynden Tully fulfilled his desire to carve out the Kingslayer’s black heart so that Jaime could gift it to Brienne to use as she wished; or so that he could fill the space with something pristine. 

Stupid old man. 

He broods over his meal until Brienne puts her hand on his shoulder and says they must spar later, which cheers him. Then she rises to leave, so he follows into the hall and pulls her into the nearest alcove and kisses her until they are both breathless and he is aching in his trousers. 

Brienne tries to blink back a blush as they part. “Why?” she manages.

“I missed you beside me last night,” says Jaime. He can feel his eyes darken as he says it, but he cannot bite back the words now they are out.

“You are crude,” she says from behind blazing cheeks, but embraces him quickly anyway.

“Are the barracks not drafty?” Jaime calls after her, but she does not turn, and he laughs off his want. Podrick or Loras is likely about to suffer the blunt end of her annoyance.

Jaime checks in on his men; recalling a friendly word or two can make a man almost eager to die for his commander when his blood is up. None seem to know precisely what to do: he finds them oiling bows, testing dark dragonglass blades, attempting to coax frigid northern women or each other into someplace with a bed. Strange to see smears of Lannister red on these castle walls. Livens the place up, Jaime tells one man. He wishes he could give them some direction — he is the one who ordered them here, after all — but neither of the Your Graces has yet given him any commands to ignore. Stay alert, is the best he can do. We don’t know our enemy yet. 

They are learning, though, in the worst way: by word of mouth. Not two days have passed beneath this roof, and already Jaime has heard the whispers of the enemy outside the walls. They appear when it is coldest; or: it is coldest when they appear. Their severed hands grab at your ankles. Their eyes are blue as robins’ eggs, as the autumn sky. Tommen, when Jaime finds him with the other squires, whispers that there are even children among them. They come only by the hundreds — for now — but they do not flag and they do not fear. 

Jaime squeezes Tommen’s shoulder and reminds him that men lie.

He notices a hollowness among those who arrived at Winterfell before the Lannister foot. Those who have fought the enemy for some months now. From the sneering Dothraki to the smooth-faced Unsullied to Stannis’s survivors and Jon Snow’s grizzled wildlings: fingers bruised, darting eyes, shoulders hunched as though cowering from a volley of soaring arrows.

An Unsullied called Red Leech points Jaime to a clearing in the godswood where the snow is not snow but ash: a sickly blight of black and gray on the forest floor. Jaime kicks at something thin and blackened. “This is where we burn them,” says Red Leech. He sounds dispassionate enough. 

Jaime is glad to have met his enemy this way.

He strolls through the godswood, trying to appear like a lord even as he feels like an intruder. Simple enough to be both, he muses. No one will ever welcome me — and why should they? Then he hears Tywin snapping that the heir of House Lannister does not feel sorry for himself and blinks away the sulk.

Nobody has shoveled the snow here in the godswood, but Jaime follows a well-stamped path and is somehow unsurprised to find that it leads to the weirwood. White as bone, wreathed with leaves the color of old blood, the tree stands even taller and thicker around than it did in his memory. Steam from the warm springs that puddle the ground twists upward into its branches: the beast is breathing. And the face in the center, dripping scarlet and contorted with sublime dissatisfaction. 

Nestled between roots like splayed fingers is Bran Stark.

He is without a chair, sitting prone on what must be damp earth. He looks up at Jaime and extends a hand. “I thought I would meet you here.”

Bran asks, and what can Jaime do but oblige? He gathers the boy in his arms and carries him up the crumbling steps of the broken tower. Bran weighs nothing at all; his useless legs hang spidery and limp over Jaime’s arm. 

Jaime deposits him on a slab of rubble at the top of the keep, facing a glaring patch of colorless sky. For a moment, the two of them stare at the window — at _that_ window. Peering over the edge, Jaime can see the jutting stones once grasped by whitened boy’s fingers. Nothing of note below: no ledger noting the cost of his sin, just a blanket of snow and a gloomy lichyard. Seven, the boy had been seven.

He swallows and turns away.

Bran stares at him with crossed arms. “How did you like the dream I sent you?”

Jaime blinks. “What dream?”

“At Riverrun. The tower and the wolves. I tried to warn you, but it didn’t work.” 

Jaime opens and closes his mouth. That dream — plummeting from a drum tower, wolves howling below. And the next day: his family slaughtered. “It was near enough to what happened,” he says slowly. “The wolves were in the wrong place.”

“Oh.” Bran scratches his forehead, looking vexed. “Sometimes I get mixed up. I thought you understood when you went to see the weirwood the next morning, but you stayed at the castle. At least, that’s what everyone said.”

“I don’t understand.” He mislikes feeling outwitted by a boy of nine.

Bran sighs as though about to repeat an oft-told tale. “I see a lot,” he explains, fixing Jaime with eyes that belong in a different face. “Well, it’s more like remembering than seeing. Things that happened and things that are happening now. Things that will happen.”

Jaime wants to scoff; magic is a children’s tale. But Jon Snow’s knowledge of King’s Landing — even Brienne found it odd. He remembers the dream, falling from that tower. Was it this tower? 

He asks, “How?”

“You probably wouldn’t understand. I have you to thank for it, though.” More than a whiff of bitterness.

“I pushed you.”

“Yes.” Something seems to grasp Bran for a moment; his shoulders straighten and his eyes focus on something over Jaime’s shoulder. “I had to fall before I learned to fly. We all do.”

Then he blinks, and the boy is back. “Sometimes it can be fun. I see a lot through birds — ravens, mostly. I like having wings.”

Jaime’s heart thumps. “You helped me find Tommen that night.”

“I did.”

“Why? Why any of it?”

“I can’t be sure. I know a lot of things, but…” Bran picks at his boot. “I don’t know _why_ I know them. But you are supposed to be here. Now. I knew I had to make sure you made it.”

Jaime digests that. Is the boy creating fate, or is he merely helping it along? Is there even a difference? He has never truly believed in fate himself; it is only another comforting tale, reassurance that even horrid things mean something. And yet...the dream had been so real. He’d grasped at nothingness with a single hand. And the raven in the woods, laughing at him, leading him off the trail…

“You helped me find my son,” says Jaime finally. “For that, I thank you.”

Bran inclines his head.

Jaime looks down at his golden hand, then at the decrepit tower around him. “Why here, Bran? Do you hope to convince me to jump?”

“No. I would have some trouble getting down without you.” Bran grins, but he is dissatisfied and the expression looks more like a snarl.

Jaime kneels before him. His hand on his sword. “I hoped you would die when I pushed you. I never meant for you to live this way. I understand something of it myself, now.” He holds up his golden hand. “I do not ask your forgiveness, only that you understand that the man I am now is not the man I was then. I am sorry, Bran. I thought I knew why I did it. But I was wrong: about myself, about everything.” About her. 

Bran says nothing for a time. Jaime remains kneeling, waiting to be released from his vow or accepted into one, he is not sure. A cold wind ruffles Bran’s hair.

At last: “I wanted to die, too, when I woke up. I see a lot, but I can’t see what I would have been. A knight, maybe. A Kingsguard. It’s all blurry, like someone else dreamed it for me. But I forgive you, Lord Lannister. I had to fly.” Bran smiles thinly. 

Jaime blinks and rises to his feet. He is about to scoop Bran into his arms when the boy speaks again, his voice strange and far away. 

“I could make you do it, you know,” he says. “Jump. If I wanted.”

A heaviness comes over Jaime, then, a numb pressure that inch by inch erases his body. He tries to look down to see if the wind has blown him away but cannot move. Yet he _is_ moving: step by inexorable step towards the window and the sky beyond. One hand on the stone wall. He could push himself up and onto the sill and leap. Perhaps he should…

Then he gasps awake, finding himself inexplicably beside the window where a moment before he had been standing in front of Bran. The blood rushes frantically in his ears. Jaime presses a hand over his eyes, trying to remember where he had been. I could make you do it, you know. Jump. If I wanted.

Bran sits where Jaime left him, his head cocked to one side in curiosity. Only a boy. Younger than Tommen.

“What did you do to me?” rasps Jaime.

“The Mad King was going to destroy the city.” Bran screws up his mouth in confusion. “He was going to burn them all. Your hands were shaking when you did it, and you vomited after. Nobody left but you knew what he planned with the wildfire. You could have told everyone at the trial what happened. Why didn’t you?”

Jaime’s breath comes in sharp gasps; his head feels thick as mud, and as Bran speaks he smells the sweet stench of wildfire and blisters beneath the heat from Aerys’s rabid eyes. Burn them all, burn them all.

Bran is still wheedling for answers, stupid, naive child. He only wants a tale. “You could have told my father when he found you,” he says, but Jaime has taken himself far, far away to the cliffs of Casterly Rock, to a tumbledown sept in the woods. 

He flexes his toes to make sure they are his and takes the stairs two at a time.

The godswood leers at him as he stumbles through the dry undergrowth, trying to find somewhere to crouch and let his ears ring. He stumbles over something beneath the snow and finds himself staring at a twisted, ivory bone. No, a root. The weirwood’s roots creep like a spider’s web all through this forest, though the heart tree itself is nowhere in sight. Jaime touches the root, feels it hum against his palm. 

What more would you have of me? he begs, as he said to this tree’s mournful cousin in Riverrun so long ago. 

He expects nothing, but Bran’s voice rings in his head. The boy sounds old and almost apologetic. He says, “There is so much more you can lose, Kingslayer.”

Jaime keeps to himself for several days after that. He is cautiously invited to what must be a war meeting, but he does not go. At meals, he preserves a deliberate distance between himself and the troubled eyes that follow him. They sit across the room in a huddle: Brienne, Podrick, Tommen, Loras, making no effort to hide their stares. Once, Tommen rises and makes for Jaime’s side, but Loras tugs him back to the bench. If Tyrion or Bran enters the hall, he pushes aside his plate and leaves.

All the while contemplating what more he can lose.

The fifth night after their arrival at Winterfell, a fist so heavy that it must be Brienne’s hammers on his door. 

“Come quickly,” she says when he opens it. “I’ll not have whispers that I visited your chambers in the night.”

Her blue eyes are uncompromising, so Jaime finds his heaviest furs and follows her into the night. Brienne walks briskly a bit ahead of him; whether from chill or annoyance, he cannot tell. She leads him to the South Gate, where they climb the wall and walk the battlements until they find the south corner of the castle. A round turret ringed with arrow slats offers the best protection from the wind that can be found on these walls. Jaime squints through one hole and can just make out, off in the distance, the swooping shadowy form of one of the dragons. 

Another tower, another confrontation. Jaime sighs.

“I spoke with Bran,” he says, before Brienne can ask. He folds his legs and sits beneath the lone burning torch. 

Brienne crouches beside him. “Did you? Is he angry?”

“I don’t know. He did something to me.” 

The memory that he cannot quite remember pounds at the side of his skull — trying to get in or out? I could make you, Bran had said. Jump.  
  
One hand on the windowsill…

Jaime clenches his hand — his right hand — but he does not have one and the muscles in his stump arm seize painfully. He curses and snatches it to his chest.

“Jaime.” Brienne’s frown softens from frustration to concern. “Are you hurt? You haven’t been right these past — ”

“Bran did something. I don’t understand what. He was in my head, he sent me dreams…” 

He can feel himself babbling, but he forces the story out. The wolf dream, the laughing raven, his hand on the windowsill, the voice in the weirwood.

“He saw the day I killed Aerys. Or remembered it for me, I cannot say. He made it fresh, like it was happening even as I stood there. The boy is something not of our world, Brienne — and he claims I did it to him.”

Brienne rubs the pommel of her sword. “This explains much.”

“And asks more.”

“Yes.” She puts a hesitant hand on Jaime’s stump arm, drawing it from his chest to her lap. “Do you think he meant to hurt you?”

Jaime rubs at his jaw. “No. No, he could have if he wanted. He only wished to frighten me, perhaps prove he is not a helpless child. It was revenge of some sort...a reminder that my apology could not make the world right. And the memory...I believe it was an accident. He stumbled over it while knocking around in my bloody head.” 

He does not mention Bran’s warning again. Dwelling on what it might mean causes bile to rise in his throat. 

Brienne reads his thoughts anyway. “You shall not lose Tommen, if that is what you fear. He is only a boy; he will be far from the enemy.”

“And you?” Jaime turns his gaze on her. 

Brienne blinks: is she someone to lose? She puts a steady hand on Jaime’s cheek. “I will be beside you.”

She moves her other hand to his cheek and kisses Jaime before he can kiss her. Her lips move soft and steady against his, soft as a dream, he thinks. Jaime nips at her lower lip, and she hisses against his mouth. He grins and tilts his forehead to rest against hers.

“What you did, I am proud of you,” says Brienne, and while Jaime does not know if she means his kingslaying or his apology to Bran, he chooses not to ask. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know that you’ve waited your whole life to hear something until you hear it from the right pair of lips.

He opens his mouth to say something inadequate — and a sentry’s horn blasts: long, clear, and piercing. The castle falls silent. Then another blast, and another. The direwolves take up the cry, howling into the frigid night.

Jaime looks at Brienne, sees his wide eyes reflected in her own. Three blasts — the Winterfell veterans told them what that means. Others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're in it now, folks!
> 
> i know some of you haven't read the books, so if you have any questions please let me know and i will be happy to answer them.


	17. Chapter 17

Three blasts: Others. 

Jaime bolts to his feet and dashes to the nearest crenelation. He strains his eyes over the side, but there is no enemy that he can see, only the faint glow of snowdrifts below the walls.

“North Gate,” says Brienne, pointing. 

The inner castle swarms with sudden motion, torches and men’s voices flickering to life as Winterfell rouses from sleep. Jaime all but leaps from the southern wall, landing shin-deep in snow and making for the armory with Brienne crashing behind him. Grim-faced Unsullied strut past in their rigid lines; they march in silence, following the sound of each other’s crunching boots.

Brienne is armored, but Jaime’s gilded plate is in the armory for mending. He shoves past swarms of fighting men, bellowing at those in red to get to the North Gate. One of the smiths thrusts Jaime’s armor into his arms. No time to fumble around himself; with Brienne’s help, dressing takes only a minute.

The two of them push their way from the armory. Outside, the courtyard runs thick with bodies: swords and lances gleaming above clamoring heads. Jaime follows behind Brienne as she heads for the godswood, the shortest way to the castle's north side. He is imagining his enemy, imagining the way his blade will sing and shiver and slice through the living dead — when a flash of golden hair catches his eye. A boy, cutting wildly through the dark mass of bodies and blades.

“ _Tommen_ ,” he shouts, slamming to a stop. 

Ahead, Brienne turns. Jaime waves her off. 

“Go on, I’ll find you,” he says, but she follows anyway as he snatches his trembling son into his arms. 

“Father,” gasps Tommen. “Father, I was looking for you and —”

“Inside — now,” Jaime grits out; unnecessarily, because he is already marching his son toward the guest house. Remembering the frozen mouse he once kicked up beneath the snow. Brienne throws open the oak-and-iron doors and waits outside while Jaime carries Tommen to his quarters and does not place the boy on the bed so much as shove him away. Pointing an armored finger in his son’s dewy face, “Stay here. If I come back and you’ve moved from this spot, I’ll clout your ears so hard they’ll snap off in the cold.”

Tommen blinks: no one has ever spoken to him this way. Is this how fathers speak? 

“Please come back,” says Tommen.

Jaime snorts, his temper abating. “I always do.”

He and Brienne sprint to the North Gate, where the draw has been lowered across the dry moat. Archers swarm like spiked ants to the top of Winterfell’s taller inner wall. Jaime notices a slim figure among them: Arya Stark, he realizes, dimly recalling Joffrey complaining that she scampered among the targets in the yard. Brienne leads the way over the moat and up the icy ladder to the top of the outer wall that rings the castle. From here, Jaime can make out the added defenses: trenches, stakes, staked trenches, heaps of chopped wood soaked in oil. Atop the walls, men light enough torches to create a false, shivering day. 

Gazing at them ruins Jaime’s night vision, but even squinting into the darkness beyond the castle reveals no enemy. There is only the wind and darkness thick enough to chew. The Lannister men glance to him for guidance: you brought us all this way, Kingslayer. Jaime nods encouragingly and draws his sword. Dark steel and a blacker night.

Brienne hasn’t a glance to spare for him. She strikes a cutting figure standing there: a head taller than everyone but Jaime, blue armor stealing what little moon there is, her mouth set in a determined line. Jaime wants suddenly to warn her to be careful, to stay in sight. He should shove her from the wall, or drag her away and sit her next to Tommen and lock the door and swallow the key. 

Idiot. He curls his lip at himself. She is a stronger sword than you, fool. His golden hand glares accusingly in the torchlight, and for the first time, Jaime wonders if he will be able to hold his own.

As if reading his thoughts, Brienne gives him a searching look. He knows with certainty that she is thinking of their clash in the woods, of the last time he fought as a whole man. Give me the sword, Kingslayer. Oh, I will, he promised.

A smile cracks him. He inclines his head at Brienne and looks away, stirred though she had not said a word.

“Where are the bloody things?” he grumbles.

“Soon,” says a rough voice beside him. 

Jaime turns, surprised to see Jon Snow, looking every bit the crow as he hunches there beneath a mountain of shadowy fur and glinting black armor. The boy’s narrow face is blank as the moon.

“There are a lot of them,” he mutters, as though forgetting Jaime can hear. He points beyond the castle, and following his finger, Jaime makes out a silver-white shape floating across the snow. 

“Let him in,” says Jon to a sour-faced brother, who gestures for the gate to be opened just enough for the pale direwolf to slip inside. “Good boy, Ghost,” calls Jon. Red eyes flash. Ghost is the size of a pony, though such a comparison is too whimsical to describe the snowy creature that lopes away, presumably to find its beastly gray and black brothers.

A dead woman’s finger strokes the back of Jaime’s neck. He thinks of Riverrun and the silver monster slavering at his throat. 

Then Jon Snow barks an order, and a moment later Jaime hears a queer sound: chattering, whispering, dry skin or paper rubbing together. The wights emerge all at once, simply there where they were not before — and moving fast. They surge like dark water toward the castle, trampling each other in their haste. 

Someone whistles piercingly on the inner wall; there is a thrum, then the hiss of arrows slicing through the winter air. They cut through the wights by the hundreds. Some streak tails of light behind them and thud against the piles of kindling just as the wights reach them. The wood snaps alight, blobs of fire spotting the snow, great drops of blood from some rutilant beast. No sound arises from the army below, not even as the creatures spasm and die wreathed in flames.

Then they are past, and scrambling for the base of the castle. Jaime’s sword leaps up. He has a moment to think: surely they cannot scale these walls before the wights do just that. Foeman claw their way up the sheer granite as though it were molded for their dead fingers. More arrows whiz by. Battle cries sound from up and down the walls.

A wight appears before him: grey-green flesh hanging claylike from what looks like a young face, slim, with a blond beard falling out in scabby patches. Eyes empty and blue as the autumn sky. Jaime realizes with a lurch that the thing is not long dead — or risen, or whatever evil thing is at work here. Someone from Winterfell, most like, or the small village east of here. 

He swings Widow’s Wail in a whooshing arc and rends the thing from skull to ribcage. 

The battle is well upon them by then: blades clanging, men calling out encouragement to each other and jeering at their enemies, though the wights seem to hear none of it. Some of the creatures bear weapons as ragged as cruel as they are, wielding blades and cudgels with fiendish determination. Jaime finds success stabbing as their decaying heads come over the battlements. It is by no means elegant swordplay; beside him, Brienne is all grunts and brute force as she defends a swath of the wall. 

Soon, there are too many to fight individually. The wights start to press forward; Jaime sees several of them push over the outer wall and tumble into the dry moat, then scrabble onward, seemingly unfazed by the fall. 

A wight pulls the man at his elbow with iron fingers over the wall. Jaime grabs for his legs — but with the wrong hand, and the man tumbles over the wall with a cry. On his other side, Brienne shouts; he whirls and finds her staring aghast as a dead man at her feet twitches and jerks to his knees. Brienne’s sword wavers: this man fought beside her only moments before; his face appears alive but for those horrible eyes. The wight makes a grab for her. Jaime is there to kick its blade away with a snarl. Brienne shakes herself; Oathkeeper stabs and the wight crumples. 

Jaime snatches up its abandoned shield and, hooking it over his golden hand, uses it to bash a swarm of wights over the edge. He finds another and kicks it towards Brienne.

“Oak and iron guard me well,” he calls.

She scoops up the shield and completes the old tourney rhyme. “...or else I’m dead, and doomed to hell.”

A bone-shaking roar sounds above their heads. Jaime looks up: a shadow darker than the sky blots out the moon. Then the night bursts into day, Daenerys’s black dragon spewing red flame in a swooping line across the horde of wights. In the sudden brightness, the green dragon, Rhaegal, lets out his own fiery roar. The wights are so many dry twigs beneath them, but there are more, always more. 

Jaime gapes for only a second — long enough to take a forceful clubbing across the chest. His armor pinches hard against him, knocking the breath from his lungs. He loses his feet, golden hand clanging against the stone even as the wight scales the nearest crenelation and aims another blow. Jaime rolls, but the wall is too narrow to escape, and the strike takes him across his shoulder. He tries a swipe at the creature’s feet. His bloody left hand, clumsy, too weak to cause any harm. Boots all around him, men too absorbed in their own battles to notice the fool at their feet. Fingers grab at his legs: more wights grasping for purchase.

They are going to pull me over, Jaime realizes, kicking futilely. They are going to pull me beyond the walls and make me one of them.

Then the greedy fingers are gone, the wight looming above him collapsed beneath a mighty stroke of the sword. Brienne hauls Jaime to his feet, her hands searching frantically for wounds. There are none to be found on his flesh, but his ribs pinch in that sharp way that tells him the bones are bruised if not broken. 

“Fine, fine,” he gasps to Brienne, shoving her to face the nearest enemy. He has fought through worse wounds. 

Brienne stays at his right side; Jaime does not miss her sword darting when a wight looks in his direction, but his ribs sear more painfully than his pride.

The flow of enemies stems to a trickle, enough time for Jaime to take stock of the soldiers around him. He gathers a party of Lannister men and leads them, Brienne forging a path, to a heavily beset section of the wall. They join a cluster of whooping Dothraki hacking down wights with their curved blades. 

Above, the dragon’s wings clap like thunder. Jaime keeps his eyes away from them, but their blistering fire scratches at the scar inside his head, the one that seals away his terror of the Mad King and his infernal vision. Burn them all, he thinks, watching the wights vanish in a streak of red. 

Then: another roar, a primal screech that splinters the sky somewhere beyond the diminished army of wights. Jaime catches a glimpse of pale wings and golden fire against encroaching clouds. A girl’s voice cries out far above: the Dragon Queen crouched on Drogon’s back. She is screaming a name. Viserys, Jaime thinks, recalling the tiny prince with a chill. 

The pale dragon soars toward the castle, vomiting a column of gold flames when its brothers fly too close. There is time, space, for Daenerys to unleash her own dragons, but she does not. Jaime realizes a moment before it happens what is coming. He shoulders Brienne to the ground, and they hunker there against the icy stone while the pale dragon scorches the wall, close enough that Jaime’s boots grow warm. Men shriek and burn, some falling where they stand, others flailing wildly and pitching over either side of the wall.

Jaime meets Brienne’s wide eyes: if the dragon comes for another pass, they will surely burn. I cannot die by fire, he thinks, hating himself for the fear he knows is carved into his face.

But the fire does not come. The pale dragon pulls up, laughter coming from the figure perched on its back. It flies out into the night, gone as soon as it arrived. Daenerys calls after it again, but the dragon does not turn. Her voice rises with anguish. 

All is quiet. The wights are gone. Brienne pulls Jaime to his feet, and they stand there, panting, sweat cooling against their skin.

Brienne’s eyes sweep over him, as if reassuring herself that he had not vanished over the wall. “I heard you scream, and when I looked you were gone from beside me.”

“Thrice-damned dragons,” says Jaime, more lightly than he feels. Did he scream? He sheathes Widow’s Wail and tilts his forehead up to touch Brienne’s

“With me,” she says. 

He knocks against her. “Aren’t I always?”

* * *

Next day, there is a black bruise from Jaime’s shoulder to his stomach and an angry scrape from his plate armor. Lucky. His ribs are not broken, but he wraps them laboriously with Tommen’s help. The boy’s moss-green eyes — mine or Cersei’s, Jaime always japes to himself — eat his father alive when Jaime returns from the battle and sinks to his bed. Jaime refuses to discuss the fight until the next morning when he needs his son’s help to deal with the bandages.

“What did the other dragon look like?” asks Tommen when Jaime concludes his sanitized tale.

“White. Like an enormous mouth flapping around the sky.” 

“Did the others fight it? The other dragons?”

“No. They could have blasted fire at it, but they didn’t. The Dragon Queen didn’t want them to, I think. Bloody foolish reservation to have in war.”

Tommen pauses in his wrapping. “Maybe she didn’t want to hurt it. The squires say she calls them her children, did you know?”

Yes, yes, the Mother of Dragons. The girl bears more titles than all of the royal court combined. Jaime sighs. He pats Tommen’s curly head and grits his teeth to pull on a jerkin. His wooden chair is set close to the crackling fire, which only reminds him of how nearly he came to not having this conversation at all.

He runs a hand through his hair. Studying his son, he says, “Do you understand why I was angry with you?”

Tommen lowers his head, inspecting the roll of bandages in his hands. “I was out where I shouldn’t have been.” 

“You were out where you could have been trampled. Or stabbed, or carried off by a wight.” This last is an exaggeration, but the tang of smoke drifting from the godswood does nothing to quell the tight feeling in Jaime’s chest when he pictures Tommen’s golden hair flashing among the soldiers. “It is my duty to keep you safe, do you understand? I was angry because” — he does not want to say this part, but his round and rosy son draws it from his lips — “because I was afraid I failed in that duty. I was afraid I had allowed you to get hurt.”

“I understand,” says Tommen. His lip quivers a bit.

Jaime tugs on his son’s ear, as Genna Lannister so often did for him. 

“Come,” he says, rising. “Let us go find our favorite knight.”

Brienne is dealing Podrick a sound thumping in the yard. The boy groans each time her blunted sword takes him across the ribs, thighs, chest. Jaime’s ribs twinge in sympathy. The yard bustles with activity, men sparring in frozen mud, others huddled around fires sharing stories from the night before. 

Podrick is glad enough to pause when Jaime and Tommen hail from across the yard. He drops his sword at the sight of his friend, earning a sharp scolding from Brienne, though she cannot help but smile as the two boys whisper together. Pod is morose. Jaime roars with laughter to hear the tale: the lad had stolen off to sleep in one of the far towers away from the rowdy squires and managed to slumber through the entire battle. Loras comes limping over, and he too laughs prettily at poor Pod’s misfortune.

“Did you fight?” Jaime asks him.

Loras nods. “Along the northeastern wall. I had to take orders from Stannis bloody Baratheon.”

This elicits a growl of sympathy from Brienne, who for all their tumultuous history has found a sort of kinship with Loras, borne of their joint training of Podrick and, Jaime suspects, a shared loathing for Renly’s murderer. 

“Did your leg hold up?"

“Did your left hand?” Loras’s eyes flash. He is not used to being doubted. “I’m still here, am I not?”

Jaime can only grunt assent at that. He draws Tommen off to the side and puts a wooden sword in his soft hands while the others resume their training.

Tommen’s eyes grow round. Not since they were last at Winterfell has anyone offered him a sword. “Am I to fight in the next battle?”

“No.” Gods willing. Jaime produces a practice sword of his own and taps it against Tommen’s, nudging the boy’s blade into a fighting stance. “The day will come, however. You must learn.”

He is gentle as he can be, mostly arranging Tommen’s feet and reminding him to keep his sword up. Gods, but the boy is gentle and eager to please. Jaime shudders to imagine what he might have become with Cersei’s claws pricking his skin. All the sugar spilling out. How did we make such a creature, sweet sister? He swallows, watching Tommen run laughing after the sword that Jaime has just knocked from his hands.

Across the way, Brienne catches his eye, and he sees a shy longing touch her face. She gestures at her ribs, questioning, and Jaime flicks his hand dismissively. Since when do you fret, wench? he says with a roll of his eyes. Brienne scowls and turns back to Podrick. 

They let the boys take up against each other, though Tommen is severely outmatched, and the fight soon devolves into giggles and Pod shaking his long black hair in Tommen’s face. Jaime hasn’t the heart to be strict with them, not at the end of the world. 

He raises his sword in a question to Brienne. In response, she swings for his head. With a whoop, he ducks, the pain in his ribs forgotten. He presses forward, parrying one strike and aiming a cut that scrapes along her side. Brienne knows his rhythm by now; she steps in, not away, and knocks aside the blow that follows. Always forward, Jaime reminds himself, dancing out of reach but never giving ground if he can help it. He has found that his agility and speed are the best counters to his weak sword arm. Brienne’s point flickers forward and takes him in the shoulder, square on the bruise. Jaime hisses and lashes out. His sword clatters against the hilt of Brienne’s, catching her fingers and knocking it from her hands. Her eyes narrow. 

Jaime expects her to yield, but she comes at him instead, dodging his surprised blow and hitting him square in the stomach. The breath goes out of him in a rush, and by the time he recovers himself, Brienne is pressed up behind him with one arm pinned across his chest and a dagger, flashing true steel, at his throat. 

“Dead,” she rumbles in his ear. 

Jaime’s breath hitches. He drops his sword to the dirt and delicately plucks the dagger from his throat. “You cheated,” he says, mildly as he can. When he turns, Brienne’s arm is still around his waist, holding him close enough to make his stomach ache with wanting.

“You said your ribs were fine,” she says, looking flushed and nearly self-satisfied. 

“Not fine enough to be battered by a brute of a wench.” He slips the dagger into the sheath at her waist. “You’re a wonder,” he informs her, which returns her shyness and his smugness and helps clear his head.

He steps away, becoming aware of the cold and the noises around them. Podrick and Tommen are watching in rapt confusion. Jaime shoos them off and goes to hang up his practice sword with the others. He can already hear the gossip tripping over its own feet to burst into every room in the castle.

He places his sword on the rack and is about to turn away when a voice sounds at his waist.

“I had heard the rumors, dear brother, but I confess I did not believe them until this moment. Kingslayer’s Whore indeed, or perhaps you are hers. Our family does so have a complicated relationship with whores. Tell me, did you truly leave Cersei’s side for that one?”

Jaime pauses, his phantom fingers twinging. “For me.”

Tyrion’s mismatched eyes glimmer. Jaime recognizes the mocking look in them from childhood, though his brother’s face is crueler now. 

“You always did have a fondness for the grotesque,” sighs Tyrion. He pulls his black cloak tighter; the scarlet Targaryen dragon is picked out in thread on his breast. Daenerys doesn't keep lions. His voice is too loud. “Her cunt must truly be sweet for you to overlook, well, everything else, shall we say. Do you imagine our sweet sister’s pretty sighs while you fuck her? Or perhaps you haven’t left Cersei behind after all, only flenched a sow and sewed her up within. I must say —”

Jaime’s hand takes Tyrion around the throat. He slams his brother into the stone wall hard enough to make those bared teeth rattle. For all his goading, Tyrion still looks startled: Jaime has never laid a hand on him, Jaime is the only one. 

But he has done worse. 

Jaime squeezes hard enough to make Tyrion wretch, his short legs dangling. “Speak of her that way again,” he says, not bothering to wipe the rage from his voice, “and I’ll tear out your snake tongue and feed it to you.”

Tommen is watching. Podrick and Loras and Brienne, all in varying degrees of readiness to step in. Jaime drops Tyrion to the mud with a thump. 

“You think you’ve so many things to be angry for,” his brother says bitterly, climbing with effort to his feet. “You think your sorrows are the only ones worth grieving.” He wipes mud from his knees and casts a pointed glance at the covered bridge that spans the armory and the Great Keep. Jaime follows his gaze and lands on the silver head of Daenerys Targaryen, staring with removed interest at the man who has just threatened her Hand.

Jaime curses and spits at Tyrion’s feet. Tyrion only smiles thinly.

“You fool,” snaps Brienne, catching up to him as he strides away to gods-know-where. “Will you never learn to hold your tongue?”

“No.” Jaime keeps walking.

Brienne catches his shoulder and spins him to face her. “Words are wind,” she reminds him.

“I shall make good on my threat next time, then.” 

He crosses his arms. They glare at each other. 

Jaime softens first. “You make a fool out of me, wench,” he mutters, avoiding her gaze.

“You do that yourself.” Brienne sighs. “I won’t have you getting into trouble on my behalf.”

Jaime throws back his head and laughs. “It is late for that, Brienne.”

“Perhaps.” She looks almost bashful. As though she is secretly glad. Then she is back to her austere self: “See a maester about your ribs if they pain you.”

They do, but Jaime tends them himself so that he can guilt her.

* * *

Sansa Stark beckons him to the dais that evening in the Great Hall. She is seated beside Bran, the two of them as far from Stannis as one can get. Jaime stands so that he does not have to look at Bran. Not that the boy is paying him a crumb of attention, his dark gaze fixed somewhere beyond the timbers that hold up the ceiling. 

“You’ve not made things easy, ser,” Sansa informs him.

“However not?”

Sansa narrows her eyes. “Your brother wanted Daenerys to burn you alive for laying a hand on him. She was ready to do it — you ought to know that she wants any excuse. I had to put in a word for you.”

“You?” Jaime cannot conceal his surprise.

“Yes.” Sansa turns over her mouth to show him she is not happy about it. “I said the tales about her must not be true, if she would execute a man for defending a woman’s honor.”

“You’ll have her after _your_ head soon enough with talk like that.”

Sansa forgets the humor in her smile. “I owed you a debt that is twice repaid. I shall not step in for you again. As it is, Daenerys and Stannis agree that you should be banned from their war council. As long as you are at Winterfell, the Lannister army is not yours to command.”

“Ah. Allow me a moment to grieve, my lady.”

“You’ll need to send someone in your stead.”

“Brienne,” says Jaime without giving it much thought. That will be rich: the wench speaking on behalf of lions.

Sansa sighs. “I assumed so. I will tell Jon to expect her.” 

Jaime makes to leave, then turns, remembering something. “You and Tyrion were wed, were you not?”

She had hoped he would forget. “We were.”

His puny, wretched brother must have looked a monster beside Sansa’s lovely face. Jaime feels an unexpected stab of pity for them both. Tyrion never wanted anyone but Tysha, he thinks, remembering the slender little girl with a pang of shame. 

“A happy match that must have been.”

“He was kind as an enemy could be,” says Sansa, her voice tight. She levels her gaze at Jaime. “But he was still an enemy.”

Bran glances over at that, which Jaime takes as his cue to return to his meal. Brienne is annoyed when he tells her the news, but not annoyed enough to want Stannis or Daenerys in charge. She frowns and asks if he is not angry to have lost his command. I have so much more I can lose, he thinks.

“To Commander Brienne,” says Jaime, raising a toast to their motley gathering, “may the fruits of my demotion be sweet as a maiden’s —”

Brienne claps a hand over his mouth. Podrick cheers.

The days that follow find them warding undead beasts away from Winterfell’s walls nearly every night. Wights, Jaime discovers to his displeasure, come in all forms, from humans to shadowcats to great shaggy bears. All with those blazing unnatural eyes. The castle becomes a nocturnal place, sleepy and quiet during the day and raucous with war each night. Jaime gathers from the seasoned men that this is a change: raids used to come perhaps once or twice a week; now, there are throngs of wights at the North Gate the moment the dull sun vanishes behind the horizon. The dragon does not return. 

Jaime falls into a routine: breaking his fast, drilling in the yard with Tommen or Brienne, drilling with the men, catching a few hours of sleep, then heading to the walls to fight the dauntless enemy. It quickly becomes exhausting, the nights too long and the days too short, the food not rich enough to quell his appetite for more than a few hours. Only Jon Snow seems not to flag. He is always the first to draw his blade and the last to retreat to — wherever it is that he goes when the sun rises. He doesn’t sleep, marvel the men. The brothers of the Night’s Watch exchange glances and say nothing.

He ignores Tyrion. He ignores Bran and Daenerys and the Blackfish. He ignores wild little Arya Stark, who slips around the castle like a knife searching for a soft spot. She leaped out at Jaime one morning as he trudged to his chambers, allowing himself a moment to be weary. The point of that splinter of a sword whistled to rest at the hollow of his throat.

Jaime froze mid-stride, his eyes sliding down and to the side to see her standing there, long face screwed up like a squashed spider.

What the world has done to these children. “I’ll wager your father didn’t teach you to use this,” said Jaime.

“Shut up about my father.” She talked as though biting at the air. 

“You’ve a knack for it, from what I’ve seen. Graceful, quite Braavosi. Is that where you got off to?”

“Shut up.” Arya pricked at his throat. “You killed Nymeria.”

That took him aback. He is not often innocent of the accusations leveled against him. “You are mistaken, my lady.” That made her pale eyes flash. “That was Ser Brienne’s work. You may consider letting her alone, however. The wench is far jumpier than I — you may end up a splat on the wall before you’ve the chance to begin tossing around —”

“You’re a liar,” snapped Arya. She stalked so that she was facing him, sword still at his throat. Jaime could see dark dragonglass embedded in the blade. “You stabbed her straight through the throat and she died right on top of you.”

Nymeria. A hazy memory surfaced: a hunt along the road near Darry, searching with bare steel for Arya Stark and her loyal beast, the one that bit Joffrey. Cersei had been beside herself. If Jaime had come upon the girl before Ned Stark’s men, he would have opened her throat himself.

“The bloody wolf?” 

“I know it was you. She saw you.”

Jaime snorted. He stepped away, skipping back a step to avoid the sword that darted like a viper. 

“The beast slaughtered my family, tried to tear out my throat. I shan’t apologize for slaying such a thing.”

“She was _my_ family.” Arya looked suddenly as though she might cry.

Jaime watched the blade in her hand. “She was your mother’s creature in the end,” he said carefully. “Did you see that too?”

Arya’s hand trembled. “Was that really my mother?”

Only if your mother had two glowing red pits for eyes. If her ragged, hanging skin brushed your cheeks when she bid you goodnight, her ivory skull glaring beneath. If the voice you remember was an arrowhead grinding against bone.

“Your mother died at the Twins,” said Jaime.

Arya regards him. “Bran said to leave you alone,” she says at last, the unspoken _for now_ loud on her face.

Jaime ignores her after that, and tries not to feel a rotten timber holding back the sky.

“I hear talk of prophecies,” Brienne tells him in a low voice one night, when they are sipping hot water in the corner of the barracks. A stumpy candle flickers valiantly on the table between them. A round puddle of amber light. Around them, men snore and mutter in their sleep. Jaime can just make out Loras’s curly head a few bunks down. The night is a still one: the first in some time that wights have not come spilling from the shadows. He and Brienne ought to be sleeping, but they have not had a quiet moment together for days.

“Princes and flaming swords that keep back the darkness,” she goes on. Despite himself, Jaime thinks of his dream beneath the weirwood. “Did you ever hear the story of the last hero? The man who sought the children of the forest to beg their help in ending the Long Night?”

“Not since I was a boy.” Jaime raises an eyebrow. She knows what he thinks of this sort of thing.

“That was when last you heard of the Others, too.”

He concedes this with a sip of his drink.

“Even if they are only stories, they can still give us hope. Even you cannot protest that.” 

“I would not dream of it,” he says. “Men need heroes, I suppose. I have had my fair share. Perhaps we all should have listened better to our septas. Wizened old things knew more than we granted them.”

“I always believed mine,” says Brienne absently. 

“I don’t want to hear about that old crone.”

“Fine. All the stories I know come from her.”

“I know one.” He is sly. Brienne’s face says, it had better not be a jape. “Once, there was a real beast of a woman, eight, nine feet tall, and with shoulders as broad as the Wall —”

“You are insufferable,” she grumbles.

Jaime leans over and presses his lips to the scar on her cheek. His hand cards through her hair, coming to rest on her neck. Brienne turns her mouth to meet his, but Jaime smiles against her skin and avoids her mouth, pressing kisses along her jaw and up to her ear. 

“You didn’t let me finish,” he murmurs, breathing against her. “I was getting to the part about the fool knight who loved her.”

“Stay tonight,” whispers Brienne. “I-I miss you. It has been so long.” Then she reddens. “If you would.”

“I would.”

Jaime pinches the candle out and follows Brienne to her bunk, surrounded by a thin drape to afford her a measure of privacy. This, he assumes, is the reason she is allowing this: the illusion of secrecy. His body shivers to life as they press together. More, he wants more, but a lifetime of asking has left him wary. He will have to speak to her soon about loving in the shadows — he will not do it, not again. But tonight: he only pretends annoyance at the narrow cot and sleeps better than he has in weeks with her breath stirring the ends of his hair.

When they wake, it is to screaming. They tumble from the barracks with the rest of the men and into the burning cold. It is night. Jaime blinks, feeling better rested than he has in days, though the dark sky says it cannot have been more than a few hours. At his shoulders men mutter among themselves, eyeing wailing children and shouting Dothraki. 

Something is wrong. Some animal instinct with huge, brimming eyes screams at Jaime to flee, there are hunters about. His hand drifts to his sword.

Just to say something: “What...”

Then he looks at Brienne. She is pale, staring at a woman across the courtyard who keeps turning this way and that, her head tilted back at the black sky. 

“It’s morning,” says Brienne strangely. “The sun hasn’t come up.”

The Long Night, the septas used to call it. He should have listened better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this even good i do not know but i DO know that writing this is better than focusing on act 3 of 2020 so here we are


	18. Chapter 18

This is the Long Night. 

This is the cold that cuts to your lungs like swallowing a blade red from the forge. The horses freeze where they stand in the stables, heads still drooping from fitful sleep. Clever way of storing dinner, says one of the wildlings, poking at an iced-over eye. Blackened fingers and toes are as common as the wheezing coughs that seize your chest with each brumal breath. The cough carries off children and the old and more than a few hale soldiers. Some men feel secretly grateful when the gasps from a nearby bunk break off suddenly, as though the cougher grew embarrassed. When they wake from their first untroubled rest in days, a few friends carry the blue-lipped log to the godswood for burning.

This is the Long Night: the raw and malevolent dark. Your eyes will not adjust. They turn upward, hopelessly raking the sky for a single star, a sliver of moon. There is none. There is a blanket over the world, says Brienne, staring up at that dizzying black. It is a greedy darkness, stealing anything more than a yard or two beyond the eye. It prowls patiently in the shadows beyond the torches that, whatever you might think, do not recall even a dim afternoon, much less the sun and stars.

This is the Long Night: Jaime takes wounds that freeze over before they can bleed. He peels off his armor and inspects his body, the scarlet, glassy windows into himself starting to melt. They find that Tommen wields a needle better than a sword. He kneels, frowning at the cut coming together beneath his soft fingertips. This one isn’t so bad, Father. Did it hurt? Jaime always says no. Of course it hurt, Brienne will say, if she is there. 

This is the Long Night: don’t look too closely at the man next to you, for if he falls, you may have to cut him down before he rises again. Always with those unnatural eyes. The color of the sky that you decide you’ll never see again. At best, you will shove his corpse over the inner wall, where squires wait with torches ready to burn.

Jaime fights beside Jon Snow, the boy silent and pale as the snow, standing so still during each respite that Jaime mistakes him more than once for a wight. He fights beside Loras, limber and lithe despite his injury, desperate to prove himself; and the Hound, wielding his war ax with such force Jaime half expects him to start shearing away the stone. He even finds himself beside Stannis Baratheon, one gray figure among many, his mouth set vanishingly thin. But mostly he fights with Brienne: beside her, behind her, a step ahead. He senses her the way he senses his phantom limb. That is where I would move, he thinks, and she steps there. His sword arm tires; hers swings with power enough for both of them. She stands tall and stalwart as the elm on her shield. 

He has always known love to be a tumble through scorching wind, the air fleeing his skin even as he snatches for it. Brienne is the abrupt landing at the end. She is the soreness that he feels in his bones the next day, and always.

Death slithers closer than it has ever been. They no longer expect to keep the wights outside the walls. Jaime will hear screams at his back and know that there has been a breach: wights in the courtyard. The assault is near-constant now, dead fingers always knocking at the door. They come in waves. They come riding decaying horses, snow bears, enormous spiders with limbs of ice. Jaime hears them clattering in his dreams. However many men he has killed in his life — and it is an impressive number — he has never known death like this. The Stranger has so many faces. Jaime Lannister does not fear death, but he comes to fear prolonging. The end that is not the end. I always hoped to be a great man, he tells Brienne, the two of them staring down at blue-eyed constellations. Now I am just glad to be a man.

The look she gives him.

Day and night, morning and evening — they are obsolete now. Samwell Tarly has some system with candles for tracking the time but even he admits that it is mostly guesswork. Someone — it must have been a Stark sibling — dares to ask Bran if it is dark all over Westeros. Bran blinks and says: the sun has set on the world. 

It makes Jaime think unwittingly of Cersei, her golden head buried somewhere beneath the Rock. Like Tommen’s crown accumulating the winter snows. I do not dream of you, she had spat, and the words sizzled on the stone at his feet. What about now, he wonders. Do you dream of me now, at the end of the world? He pokes the thought with a cautious finger and finds that he hopes the answer is no. Cersei, he reflects, is not his mirror so much as a mirage, mist across his palm. He is still learning what it means to see his own face in the mirror.

Bran might know Cersei’s dreams. Not that Jaime would ask anything of him. He does not get the sense that Bran talks much to anyone. The Your Graces certainly seem vexed with the boy. Daenerys primly disregards him from one end of the dais, eating her meals with a scrupulousness so precise it must be practiced. She does _look_ like a queen, says Tommen, perhaps thinking she wears it better than he did, perhaps admiring the way Daenerys makes every chair appear the envy of the Iron Throne. She _is_ a queen, Jaime says briskly: he will not give her any more reason to remove his son’s head. He knows better. All his life he has observed rulers and those who would rule in their place. He knows that not a moment passes where she does not think of her nephew’s arse warming the throne that belongs to her. Ned Stark’s best carved black furniture must chafe her pale skin. 

Wait until you sit the real thing, thinks Jaime. He raises his goblet when the Dragon Queen looks his way.

One often observes Stannis ensconced with Jon Snow. There is history there, and having spent more time around Jon, Jaime finds himself unsurprised that the two of them have found something of a companionship. The both of them are somber and hard. Stannis was a long time at the Wall, the surviving brothers say. Brienne says that he often defers to Jon in council meetings. He has seen more of the enemy than any of us, she points out when Jaime determines this odd. 

But in this she is wrong, and this Jaime would have sensed even if he hadn’t had Bran Stark knocking around inside his skull. There is something ancient in those eyes. Bran would probably call it memory if you asked, but whose, he would not say.

There is all this chatter about prophecies. Azor Ahai and his flaming sword that quenches the darkness, the prince that was promised to win the dawn, the last hero of the First Men. They all sound like one when you put it that way. It sounds like something out of a tale that would have thrilled Jaime as a child. Arthur Dayne and Ser Duncan the Tall and the prince that was promised. Trite rubbish.

And yet, sometimes he looks down at Widow’s Wail and imagines the red parts of the steel bursting to life in his hand. They would all fall before me, he thinks. The Others, the wights, Euron and his pale dragon. Snow melting at his feet.

You are supposed to be here, Bran had said. Here, now. He had guided Jaime’s steps. For what, if not some greater purpose?

You’re a fool, he tells himself. You are the Smiling Knight, not a hero in some tale. The stars have hidden their faces to avoid the sight of you.

“Praying for something particular?” he asks Brienne. 

It is evening, near as Jaime can guess. They are in the sept. Brienne wanted to say a prayer before returning to the barracks after an exhausting shift on the walls. Jaime has never known her to be much for the gods, but prayer in this darkness does feel appropriate. He watches her kneel before the Warrior from beside a valiantly smoldering brazier, his arms crossed. 

“For strength and courage,” says Brienne without looking up. Her helmet she has tucked beneath one arm, and her straw-blonde hair, longer than Jaime has ever seen it, falls past her face. It threatens to catch on the candles lit at the Warrior’s white boots. “For my sword to swing true.

Jaime doubts the gods are inclined to grant what she already possesses.

He says, “Perhaps you should pray nicely for the dead to stay dead. That may be a task for the Stranger.”

The Stranger’s half-hooded face leers from an alcove on the wall opposite the Father. Jaime can just make out a pair of smooth onyx eyes, glittering. No candles warm those silent feet.

Brienne rises; the tiny flames around her cower. “Will you not pray yourself?”

“I’m not a favorite of the gods, wench. How many nights did I spend begging to grow another hand?” He waves his golden replacement. “Divine rejection is all I am like to get.”

Brienne huffs, crossing the sept to stand with him. Jaime takes her in his arms and presses his lips to her forehead, warm from kneeling above the flames. 

“When we spoke in Harrenhal I thought you looked half a god,” says Brienne. Absently. He is finding more warm places on her jaw.

Jaime grins against her skin. “If an aging, crippled knight is a god, what are you?”

“Don’t _laugh_.” But she is holding one in herself. 

“I am the Stranger if I am anything, these days. No candles at my shrine.”

“No.” Brienne shakes her head, one hand drifting to touch his face. “The Warrior,” she says softly, her eyes holding his. “You always have been, to me.”

Jaime swallows hard. A moment ago he held her. Now he clutches, the warmth in his fingers turning to heat. 

“Will you come with me?” he asks, pulling gently on her arm. Hearing the craving in his voice, as heavy and all-consuming as the dark. “Brienne. If you don’t wish it, I swear I will not ask again.”

Her eyes are wide, roiling. “I wish it,” she whispers.

His chambers in the guest house are warm and dim, the heavy oaken door sealing out the icy wind that paces, wailing, in the courtyard. Steel clangs distantly: those poor souls who face the wights while the rest of us sleep. Or not.

Jaime pauses when the door is closed behind them. Tread carefully now, he tells himself. When he glances over at Brienne, looking unsure and almost small in the center of the room, he nearly rethinks the whole thing, terrified of putting a foot wrong.

Then he remembers the stench of bear and the jolt of pain that shot up his ruined arm when he leaped and scoffs at himself. He crosses the room in two strides and kisses her hard, his hunger only growing when she matches his fervor. His hand finds her face and her hip, always seeking to pull her closer.

Their armor clatters. Jaime laughs. 

“Off,” he says, fumbling at his pauldrons. Piece after piece crashes to the ground. Jaime remembers how delicately he undressed her in King’s Landing. He does not offer himself the same kindness: he tears each piece from his body as though they are hot enough to burn.

When he finishes Brienne is studying him, her eyes as dark as he has ever seen them. She wears nothing but a linen shirt and pants, dark against her skin. Jaime balls his shirt in his fist and pulls it over his head, leaving his chest bare. 

He touches his fingertips to the pink rope of a scar across Brienne’s collarbone. That wretched bear. I dreamed of you. He could say it again: I dreamed of this. Brienne puts her hand over his, moving it ever so slightly to the collar of her shirt. Jaime fingers the laces. Yes? She nods, and helps him pull the heavy cloth over her head and toss it aside.

Nothing, now. Jaime regards her: pale, bare-chested, small breasts pink and freckled. His eyes land on the scar across her muscled stomach; the Elder Brother’s stitches have healed nicely, but the wound is cruel and red as a lash. 

Jaime starts forward, but Brienne winces and moves to cover herself.

“None of that,” he says.

“Jaime…” 

“You’re not afraid of me, wench.”

Her eyes flash. “Never. I only…” One hand makes a fist across her chest. “I know that I am not…that I do not look —”

“No,” says Jaime. “Do not finish that sentence, elsewise the Others may secure my sword in razing this wretched world to the ground.”

She doesn’t believe him. Jaime grabs her hand and presses it to the hardness between his legs, swallowing down a hiss at the touch. “For you,” he says lowly, watching her watch him. “For you, as you are.”

Brienne’s eyes widen. She nods, but when Jaime tugs her towards the bed, she stops him.

“Take it off,” she says, gesturing to the golden hand that suddenly weighs like an anvil on his wrist. He hesitates, but she removes the straps for him and presses his naked stump to her scarred cheek. “As you are,” she murmurs. 

Then they are falling into bed and each other. Her hands feel the way Jaime imagined they would, strong and callused at the fingertips, hesitant at first but growing bold when he nudges them toward all the right places. His skin sears where they touch; the heat goes to his head, his chest, his cock. She is burning me alive, he thinks, and reconsiders his vow not to die by fire. He finds her neck with his lips and lingers there, turning pale skin red beneath his teeth and tongue. Brienne’s long fingers thread through his hair, pulling almost hard enough to hurt when Jaime nips below her jaw. She surprises him by sliding a hand to his lower back and pulling his body hard against her, his cock aching against her leg. He bites back a groan at the friction. 

“Two can play at that game, sweetling.”

He cuts off her reply with his lips. Supporting his weight on his stump arm, he runs his hand over her small breasts, the nipples hard and pink beneath his touch. Brienne gasps into his mouth; never has he heard such a soft sound from her lips. He takes one breast in hand, rolling the nipple between his fingers. Unable to resist, he draws back to watch her face: flushed, alight with the look that Jaime first saw in the woods near Maidenpool. Come on Kingslayer, what’s next?

He smiles and captures her other breast in his mouth, sucking lightly. Her skin is soft in his mouth, but he can feel the firm muscle beneath. The bear’s claws gashed here; Jaime kisses each slash, thinking that he never should have left her behind. 

Brienne knows his thoughts. Her eyes say, shut up. She tugs him back to her mouth and they kiss with renewed vigor, one of Brienne’s hands holding Jaime’s stump to her waist.

He trails his other hand down her stomach, feeling the ropy scar and muscle like iron. Her strength thrills him: if she wanted she could wrest him from her body, shove him with a thud to the floor. But she wants it. The scrape of her teeth against his lips, her hand across his chest. She touches him as though he is a dream made flesh, which still at any moment might flit from her memory.

Jaime’s hand plays at the waist of her breeches. He draws back for a moment and raises an eyebrow, grinning when Brienne nods forcefully. Together, they pull away her breeches and smallclothes, revealing long, corded legs. Jaime runs his hand up and down them, gripping her thigh tightly and relishing the sharp intake of breath that follows. The sweet pain in his stomach grows. He sits back and with effort removes the last of his own garments. Brienne watches from her elbows, thoughts flitting like minnows across her face.

“What?” asks Jaime. 

Brienne considers shaking her head, but they are already bare before each other. “You are beautiful, is all.” She blinks and sits forward, spreading a hand across Jaime’s chest. He sits breathlessly, feeling his heart pound through her palm. Her fingers touch the pink scars that weren’t there are Harrenhal, and the pale one near his eye where she nearly blinded him. 

“Nasty wench,” he breathes, “you nearly deprived me of this view.” He means her clear eyes and endless legs and rippling arms. 

She reddens but does not look away, instead taking Jaime’s face between her hands and repeating herself. 

All his life he has known he is beautiful; never before has he believed it.

They are sitting up, facing each other, and like this he slides his fingers between her legs, finding her wet and hot against his hand. Brienne sucks in a breath, her palm flying up to her mouth to catch the sound that follows. Jaime nudges it aside with his stump and kisses her instead, each gasp against his lips making his cock ache. He slips a finger inside her, then another, curling rhythmically, his thumb stroking her center until her hands grow tight on his shoulders and she comes with a shudder and a soft cry. 

“Jaime,” she whispers, dipping her head to kiss his shoulder. He thinks she is going to pull away, spent, but she reaches between them and puts a hand around his cock. Jaime makes a strangled noise, his head falling back. Brienne freezes. He takes her hand in his and guides her up and down, showing her how to run her thumb over the head, chest heaving when she follows his lead.

“Wait,” he gets out, when he is too close. He pushes her back against the sheets and fumbles to position himself at her entrance. Their breaths are coming fast now, sweetly delirious. 

“Tell me you want it,” murmurs Jaime, dipping his lips to her ear. “Say my name. Please.”

Pleading to his own ears, but Brienne’s gaze scorches him.

“I want it,” she says. “Jaime.” Softer: “Jaime.”

He pushes into her and they both groan. Jaime shuts his eyes briefly while he gives her a moment to adjust. Fuck, when was the last time he felt this way: utterly whole and dizzy with pleasure. He rocks his hips forward and Brienne moans. Briefly, he considers being gentle, thinking of the Bloody Mummers and Red Ronnet and — but Brienne dispels the thought by stirring her hips against his, rising to meet him. When have they ever been gentle? Jaime thrusts sharply forward, eliciting another moan. He finds a rhythm, always moving into her, skin to skin, his mouth on her lips, her breast, her neck, every sweet inch of skin he can find. When he is close, he pulls away and spills on his stomach. Beside him, Brienne trembles again, then sags bonelessly against the pillows.

They lay there for a few hazy moments. Jaime takes her hand and presses it to his lips. Eventually, he rolls over and finds a cloth to clean them. There is wine on the table. Cersei would want that about now, he thinks, then curses himself for it. You’re a ghost, he tells her, turning away. The whole of Casterly Rock is your gravestone. 

He slips into bed beside Brienne; she draws the blanket over them, perhaps conscious of her nakedness now that their sweat is cooling. Jaime lifts the blanket before it settles and looks and the sheet beneath: there is a small, dark stain between them. 

“Someone will know,” says Brienne.

Jaime lets the sheet fall, considers her. “Is that such a terrible thing?”

“It’s not that.”

“Your reputation.”

“We are unwed.”

“That is easily remedied.” 

She sniffs. “It isn’t the time or the place.”

There may not be another time or place. Jaime keeps his tone light: “You know as well as I do that half the castle thinks we’ve been fucking like the blazes since King’s Landing. Loras asks me if I’ve been taking my moon tea. It is no secret what is between us. You aren’t one to shy away from the truth, Brienne. Tell me.”

She pulls the sheet a little tighter. “You will only laugh it off, or tell me to scorn them.”

“Them.”

“Yes.” Brienne avoids his eyes. “You must know what people say...what they will say when they see us together. Remember Shagwell? ‘The bear and the maiden fair.’ You, beautiful, and me…” 

A hundred denials leap to mind, but Jaime does not like there to be lies between them. He knows what his father’s response would be. Lions and sheep. 

“They may say that. And it will be far from the worst thing ever said about either of us.”

“It would not shame you to be seen with one so unworthy?”

“Un—” That draws him up short. 

Before he can say more, Brienne starts to spill over.

“Renly was kind, and I loved him — then he died in my arms. A shadow killed him, of all unlikely things. You think I did not know how his men scorned me? How they laughed to think that a creature like me could love or want to be loved?” Brienne’s face folds on itself. “I have oft thought to myself that they might have been right. How could one love such as me? Especially you. When you have — when your sister is so beautiful.”

Jaime’s phantom fingers twinge. He pushes himself up on one elbow to look at her, trying to consider his next words carefully. The subject was always unavoidable. Cersei. He smashed his side of the mirror, and she cuts him with the pieces. 

“I don’t love her anymore.” He cannot put it more bluntly than that. “Not the way I did. She is part of me the way my hand was. I know myself in her absence better than I ever did when we were together. I doubt if she ever really cared for me; it was just the sight of her own loving face that got her off. Cersei would fuck herself if she could.”

He pauses; Brienne shifts to show that she is listening. 

“I will not go back to her. It’s you, Brienne. Wench. I I have no illusions know exactly who is in my bed.” This earns half a smile. “Cersei was rotting beneath her gilded flesh. You… You are the most worthy person I have ever known. It is I who do not deserve to sleep beneath your stars. However —” he cuts off her interruption. “However, I shall promise to accept your love if you accept mine. Damn if shame will keep us from each other’s sides. I love you. As you are.”

He reminds himself often of what she said that snowy evening in the woods when he offered to find a man to knight her. Not another man. I would rather it was you. It is like the fire always flickering in his hearth.

Brienne blinks hard several times, then nods mutely and moves so that her body presses against his, one arm slung around his waist. They lay like that for some time; each breath melting them further into each other. Brienne smooths a hand over his cheek. Jaime tilts her chin to look at him and studies her eyes, questioning. Brienne nods: I believe you.

Then she purses her well-kissed lips, pushing back a smile.

Jaime nudges her. “What?”

“You looked so vehement just now.” She shakes her head, letting the smile out. “Fuck shame.”

Jaime rolls onto his back and laughs aloud. “Fuck shame.”

Brienne kisses him warmly, then lets her head drop on his chest, tucked beneath his chin, and soon falls asleep that way. Jaime passes his thumb over her mangled cheek, feeling a tenderness instead of the old rage.

He wonders how many times a man can shed his skin, thinking of all the hollow men he has shrugged off his shoulders: in the Bloody Mummers’ camp, in the bowels of King’s Landing, in snowy footprints on the Kingsroad — in every moment before this one. 

* * *

It is perhaps a week later that they get their first glimpse of the Others. A pale mist coalesces at the western tree line. The creatures emerge at a distance, far enough away that Jaime’s eyes cannot make out details. They are slim figures, unnaturally tall, their armor shifting now blue, now black in the torchlight. White shadows. Jaime makes out a few slender, pale swords; he senses their sharpness instinctively, his skin prickling in anticipation of an imagined slash. 

A slew of wights gathers like smoke, but the Others make no move to follow the swarm toward the castle walls. They watch Winterfell’s soldiers repel the wights and then, when all is silent, one moves forward and touches a palm to the ground. The wights stand up again. At Jaime’s shoulder, Loras curses, but the dead only turn and scramble back towards the trees. The Others cast a last glance at Winterfell, and then they are gone.

Later, every man on the West Wall swears he felt those ancient eyes scraping over his skin. Jaime rolls his eyes, but he felt the same.

The castle whips into a fervor after that, terror feeding terror, every soul imagining his armor parting like silk sheets beneath those crystal blades. Tales magnify in the telling: they are tall as giants, they are made of mist, they can read your thoughts. The dead are the dead, but the Others are something else; they are in between. 

The next time there is a lull in attacks, the Your Graces and Jon Snow cram as many people in the Great Hall as they can. Men on tables, children on shoulders, latecomers listening at the door. A tightness in the air. Jaime and Brienne find a space along one wall and lean there with Tommen and Podrick at their hips. Loras comes limping over, smirking to see Jaime toying with the ends of Brienne’s hair. The cold pains the boy’s leg, but Jaime does not move to let him rest against the wall. If it were him, he’d rather the pain.

All eyes search Bran Stark’s round face, solemn in the center of the dais. He looks to his brother. Jon gestures with his chin, and a hush falls over the room.

“Bran knows something of the enemy,” says Jon. “He learned about them, out beyond the Wall, in places unfound.”

Bran takes a breath. “I’ll tell you about the Others,” he says, his voice heavy, weighing down his youthful face. The little lord of Winterfell. He begins his tale.

Long ago, during the Dawn Age, the children of the forest walked the land that wasn’t yet Westeros. They clothed themselves in bark and leaves and left no prints where they walked. When they died, says Bran, dreamy, they became part of the weirwood forests that once bled all over the continent. 

When the First Men came marching across the Arm of Dorne, they carried axes made of blinding steel. They diverted rivers, they cut down weirwoods. The ground grew sticky with red sap. For thousands of years, the children and the First Men warred for the land now named Westeros. The children used all the magic at their disposal, summoning animals, peering into the future, creating servants and arming them with weapons of their own making. Never in all their eternity had the children needed weapons. 

Only a pact signed on the Isle of Faces stopped the war. All the gods witnessed the agreement, which promised forests to the children and open lands to the First Men.

There was peace. 

Bran pauses at this, eyes misty, and Jaime gets the terrible sense that the boy is somewhere far, far away from this hall.

Whatever the pact said, the children had lost the war, and all knew it. Their power waned, their magic scorched from the earth like morning mist. And those servants: born of magic and war. They grew restless, chafing at the trammels of their prison in the Land of Always Winter. The children had no more need for these creatures, these Others, but the creatures yearned to do the one thing for which they were born: kill the First Men.

The children’s power waned, Bran repeats, and the Others broke free. What choice did they have? In the War for the Dawn, the children and the First Men fought side by side to drive back the monsters and find the light once more. Together, they raised the Wall, banishing the Others to the bleak places beyond. 

The Others stewed there for thousands of years. Every breath they drew in that winter-white world fueled their hatred of the men who banished them, the men who now raised ugly, stone cities on the land the Others were born to protect. 

Bran pauses, looks at Jon again. Jon steps forward, placing one gloved hand on the table before the dais. 

“The Night’s Watch had an understanding with the Others, once,” he begins, looking as though he would rather be talking about anything else. “The old, the crippled, the men who broke their vows, the bastard babes — the brothers slipped them beneath the Wall. It was the only way to keep the Others at bay. The Others killed the offerings as rose them as wights. They built their army that way over thousands of years.” 

A collective hiss. Jaime opens his mouth to whisper something about the grim fate he and Loras would have met, but Brienne squashes the jape with a look.

Instead, he calls out, “Why stop?” Then, considering, “And why not start again?”

Brienne elbows him. A few glares turn his way, but more people are muttering agreement. 

Jon Snow’s gray eyes are two chips of flint. He nods at Jaime. “We considered it. Sending the rapers and killers to the other side to see if that would stave them off. Then the Wall fell, and it didn’t matter anymore.”

Jon looks around the room. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. We can’t say why the brothers of old broke off the agreement. My guess is that they were ashamed and afraid, men turning on each other in hopes they could avoid being the next soul sent away. Anyhow, it wouldn’t matter. There’s no holding the Others off now. They’re here.”

“What do they want?” someone shouts.

Bran Stark has been patting the pale gray direwolf at his side, but now he looks up. “It’s like I said. They want to do what they were made to do,” he says. “To take back Westeros, starting by spilling the blood of the First Men. Winterfell is just the place to start.”

The Starks, Jaime realizes, thinking of those grim house words. Winter is coming. He can almost hear it in Ned Stark’s rough tongue. Poor dead Ned, never lived to see his bleak prophecy come true.

“What about Euron?” This from a white-haired figure hunched near the oaken doors. “What does he want with them?”

“He’s your family,” bites Arya Stark from beside her sister. “Maybe you should go ask him.”

Sansa shushes her. 

Bran looks uneasy. “I don’t know.” He says it as though the words have an unfamiliar taste. “Chaos, maybe. The end of the world.”

When Mace Tyrell heard that Euron Greyjoy invaded Oldtown, he had fumed: what use for dust and old books has a man who went to Valyria and back? 

Jaime wonders if Euron Greyjoy outgrew the world.

The meeting disperses after that. Jaime’s body tells him that the hour is somewhere after the middle of the day, but already he feels drained. When did he last sleep? He makes for the door with Brienne and the boys, trying to remember if he left a log on the fire, but a sharp voice calls his name, and he pauses.

Tyrion is waiting alone near the door that leads to the kitchens, a short distance from where the Starks and the Your Graces huddle. Jaime turns away, intending to ignore him, but Brienne mouths, _go_ _on_. He sighs. 

“There’s something you should know,” says Tyrion when they are alone. His short legs shift beneath him.

Jaime waits. He could have had Brienne’s breeches off by now.

Tyrion scratches the red ruin where his nose used to be, trying to decide whether to be blunt or delicate. “Myrcella’s dead,” he says, settling on the former. “Bran saw her body, a bloody smile across her throat. Too many people in King’s Landing like their Lannisters dead, I suppose. It could have been the Dornish, could have been the Tyrells — gods know they want revenge after what Cersei did to Margaery.” He looks like he wants to twist the knife a little more, but he stops there.

Jaime manages, “Cersei won’t like that.”

Tyrion grimaces. “No. Rather little she can do about it, though. A knife in the dark is all too common in King’s Landing these days, and anyhow, our sweet sister is leagues away, prowling beneath the Rock.” He halts, narrow eyes flicking across Jaime’s face. “It doesn’t really matter,” he says, when Jaime lets nothing show. “I just thought you should know. It might be that Tommen —”

“Stay away from him,” says Jaime. He shoves past a crooked table as he goes out, earning a squint from Daenerys Targaryen, but he ignores her and storms into the cold.

The news levels Tommen. He crumples to the floor and sobs into his hands, his face smeared with tears and grief. Jaime stays seated on the bed, feeling like a monster looming over his son. He prods at the limp sentences on his tongue. _Don’t cry._ Why not? _It’s all right_. It’s the end of the world. 

In the damp tunnels beneath the Red Keep, he had told Tommen not to carry his grief with him. It was kinder than what his own father would have said; now it would be crass as a slap. He remembers Margaery’s surprise when her hands found the dagger in her stomach. Color splashing across her cheeks. So many dead children.

“We should have gone back to get her,” says Tommen, turning his face away when Jaime lowers himself to the floor. “You didn’t even try. You wouldn’t let me go.”

Even his anger feels hollow. “It was hard enough getting you out of the city safely. We would be a pretty row of rotting heads if we had gone back for her.”

Maybe. Aegon wanted Jaime to bend the knee, bring the Lannister army to heel. He could have done it, left the northerners to their fight. What was one more promise broken? 

Myrcella, or the world. It had not been a difficult choice.

He puts a hand on Tommen’s knee and lets his son cry. It is not what his father would have done. A cold sneer pricks at his shoulder. I am not you, Jaime tells it.

“He’ll be all right,” he says to Brienne, later. Tommen has wept himself to exhaustion; Jaime left him asleep on a pallet beside his bed. Before he left, he spent a moment staring at his son’s tangled curls. Now he and Brienne are facing each other in an alcove outside his chambers. Facing is the wrong word — Jaime is finding things of interest in the stone walls. 

“And you?” she says. Always cutting to the heart of it.

Jaime shrugs, perfectly insouciant. “She is not mine to grieve. I hardly knew her at all.”

“Tommen loved her.”

“He loves everyone. And she was his sister.”

“What would you have done if you lost...if you lost your sister at that age?”

Jaime looks at the place where his hand used to be. He came into the world holding Cersei with that hand. “I would have burned down the world.” He sighs. “Perhaps that would have been for the better.”

Brienne keeps her face in careful order. She shakes her head. “You shouldn’t pretend to hate the world. It doesn’t become you."

Neither of them can decide if this is the right thing to say, but the truth of it sits melting between them. He smiles: splitting his skin.

“You know me too well, wench.” Hopping lightly over the puddle. Jaime makes himself look sly. Indecent even as Myrcella’s body isn’t yet cold. He stands and kisses her forcefully, tasting his own bitterness more than anything else. His hand wanders from her neck to the hem of her shirt, fingers brushing against the warm skin beneath. Brienne’s breath hitches, but she pushes him away.

“This isn’t — you are grieving. Angry. I won’t.”

Jaime narrows his eyes. “I know my own mind.”

But Brienne knows it equally. Jaime recalls her manner after they learned of Robb and Catelyn Stark’s deaths. Eyes like stones, shoulders hunched, a lance at the end of her tongue. She grieves the way he does, a sawed blade pointing both ways.

“Your mind is elsewhere,” Brienne is saying. “I would not lie with you to make you forget.”

“Why bloody else?”

He wants to snatch the words back as soon as they leave his mouth, but it is too late; they splatter across Brienne’s face. She takes a step back as if to run, then remembers herself and shoulders past, making no effort to avoid colliding with him.

Jaime stumbles, throwing his right arm against the wall to catch himself. He is not wearing his golden hand, and pain blazes up his stump like a torch catching alight.

“Bloody fucking hells.” Jaime slams his other fist against his thigh, trying to bite back the pain. He calls after Brienne, but she is gone, and the wailing wind whisks his voice away.

Inside his lightless chambers, Tommen still snores softly on the floor. Jaime sags against the door for a moment, his eyes slipping closed. You’re a broken man, Kingslayer. He avoids the bed, dragging off a blanket and stretching out beside Tommen. His eyes find the ceiling, staring at a fixed spot that becomes blacker and blacker by the moment, shadow on top of ebony on top of the festering thing at the center of his chest. 

Tommen’s voice: you didn’t even try. 

Rhaegar’s solemn shade: I left my wife and children in your hands.

He wonders who will keep Myrcella’s vigil. Her golden shroud. The night passes that way, sleepless, Jaime lying deathly still and counting Tommen’s breaths.

* * *

Tommen sleeps in Jaime’s room for several nights after that. Jaime often returns from battle to find him bunched up beside the fire, his arms around his knees. “I couldn’t sleep,” he’ll mumble, and after Jaime sheds his snow-caked armor he sits beside his son, holding his frozen fingers just inches from the flames. Tommen keeps asking if Myrcella is really dead. Yes, she is really dead. He wants to know how she died; Jaime tells him someone made her fall asleep.

Tyrion occasionally eyes Tommen in the Great Hall, looking subdued. He was always closer to the children than Jaime was. Still, Jaime glares daggers until his brother averts his gaze. They eat alone but for when Podrick steals away from Brienne’s side to try to cheer Tommen. 

“Ser lady says nothing is wrong, but she won’t stop snapping at me,” says Podrick glumly. His black hair hangs in his face. “More than usual, I mean. She’s very wroth with you, my lord.”

“Ser will do. I’m not a lord anymore.” Jaime drums his remaining fingers, casting a glance at the enormous double doors as though the wench might sweep in behind the wind. “She’s hideous when she’s cross,” he mutters, more to himself than to the boys. 

Tommen looks up, frowning. “That’s rude, Father. Ser Brienne took a wound in battle.”

“M’lady is quite kind,” adds Pod. “She might look mean, but she took me in and taught me the sword. She missed you greatly, ser, when we —”

“Shut up,” snaps Jaime, making both boys jump. “I know she’s bloody kind.” 

Pod shrinks and Tommen’s eyes well. Jaime rubs a hand across his face.

“Go train at swords,” he tells them. Tommen opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t want to, but Jaime waves him off. “Go. Stay in the courtyard.”

The boys slink off, leaving Jaime alone with his bowl of cloudy gray broth. He stirs it, searching morosely for anything solid. 

“It gets no better by staring at it.” Jon Snow settles across from Jaime on the bench Podrick just vacated. He folds his pale hands in front of him. “I need a word with you.”

“More than one?” Jaime glances up. Jon is dressed for battle: black armor glittering beneath black fur, his longsword on his hip. His direwolf, Ghost, looms at his shoulder, ruby eyes fixed on Jaime’s meal. You can have it, Jaime thinks, pushing the bowl aside. 

Jon says, “I want to lead an expedition. A ranging of sorts.”

“To where?” 

“The Others have been showing their faces near every time there’s a large attack, now. Usually, they just raise the wights and leave, but they’ve been coming closer lately. I think they’re looking for something.”

This is true. Two days ago they came nearly within arrows’ range, lingering behind the mass of wights. 

“Next time they come, I want to follow them,” says Jon. “It might be that they lead us to something useful. Ghost can keep their trail even in the snow. I’m here asking if you would like to come.”

Jaime sits back, considering Jon more than his request. “Why me, Snow? Hoping one of them will carry me off into the night?”

Jon smiles thinly. “I once wished rubble and ruin upon House Lannister, ser, but houses mean less than nothing to me now. There is family, of course, but even that is not so simple as it may seem. Banners mean nothing at the end of the world.” 

“All of that,” says Jaime, “sounds like something a bastard would say.”

Jon shrugs. “I wish you no ill, ser. Besides, your men trust you, even if Her Grace has decreed that they are not your men as long as they are inside Winterfell’s walls. They will listen to what you have to say about the Others. Anyhow, I am bringing good swords, and you are more than capable with your left hand.”

Jaime wonders if this last is a lie. He feels like a shadow of his former self. “Who is coming?” he asks. 

“Stannis, Tormund Giantsbane, Dolorous Edd, the Blackfish, the Hound, and Brienne of Tarth.” 

“I’ll come,” says Jaime.

“Good.” Jon stands. “We will hang behind the walls with horses next time there is a raid. As soon as the Others start to fade away, we’ll follow them. Is there any meat in that bowl? Ghost gets hungry.”

* * *

The next big attack comes about three days later, and as planned their party rides into the wolfswood just as the cold mist starts to dissolve, with one change — Stannis Baratheon took a wound to the leg the night before and cannot ride. In his place, looking somehow regal on a shaggy black garron, is Daenerys Targaryen. Jon would have been satisfied continuing on with just seven, but Daenerys fixed her violet eyes on him and said, “The creature has my dragon,” and no one argued after that. Jaime says loudly that Ser Jorah Mormon will not like this, but Jorah is on the walls and cannot hear.

Brienne assiduously ignores Jaime, riding near Jon and Daenerys at the front of their little column. Behind her ride the Hound and the Blackfish, who does not avoid Jaime, but oozes such pointed contempt that Jaime stays back to avoid the stench. He hangs towards the rear with the white-bearded wildling called Tormund and the sour brother known as Dolorous Edd. 

According to Jon, the Others leave no prints when they walk, and anyhow the retreating wights have trampled over the snow with their moldering feet, so Jon relies on Ghost’s nose instead. Jaime can hardly make out the white direwolf against the snow, but Jon always seems to find him. He keeps an eye out for wights, but the woods are deathly silent. Jaime guesses that most of the animals are dead.

“If there are wights, it’s us at the back they’ll take first,” says Dolorous Edd. “That’s what happened to Pyp, do you remember it, Tormund? ‘I’ll take the back,’ he said, and guess where the attack came from?”

“Was Pyp a crow?” asks Tormund. 

“As sure as I am.”

“Don’t remember him.” 

Jaime grins. Tormund barks a laugh, making his garron shift uneasily and the Blackfish cast a disapproving glance over his shoulder.

Dolorous Edd shrugs. “Just you see. We’re a man short without Stannis. It’s always the one man that makes a difference.”

“Don’t want that stack o’ bones riding with us,” growls Tormund, his jovial manner dropping. 

“Old blood?” asks Jaime.

Tormund snorts. “No older than any between the crows and me. There are good crows, though. Stannis is a demon.”

“His reputation south of the Wall is at odds with that description.”

“You weren’t there, lad. If you’d have seen what he did... Even you kneelers would spit before bowing to him.”

Jaime tilts his head, guiding his mare around a snowdrift. Briefly out of line, he catches sight of Brienne, comically huge atop her small horse. She casts a glance over her shoulder just as he is watching her, but quickly turns back to the front. 

“What has Stannis done?” asks Jaime. “I’ve killed a king; few deeds can shock me.”

Tormund eyes him approvingly. “Beyond the wall, a name like Kingslayer is a badge o’ honor.” He brushes snow out of his beard. “The bloody bugger burnt his daughter on a pyre, is what he did. All at the behest of his red woman.”

Jaime blinks. “Shireen Baratheon?” He had assumed the poor wretch died of her greyscale. “Why?”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” grumbles Dolorous Edd, looking around as though Stannis is hiding in the trees. “Anyhow, he went mad as a hare after, killed the red woman himself.”

Jaime opens his mouth, but a call sounds from the head of the column.

“We’re close,” says Jon when they are all gathered in as tight a ring as the trees allow. “There are five all in a line, maybe more, but that’s all Ghost saw. They’re waiting up ahead.”

“Waiting?” says the Blackfish. “They know we are here?”

Jon nods. “We’ll approach without weapons in hand. It might be they want to treat with us.”

“Or they’re waiting to slit our throats like chickens,” says Sandor.

“Or that.”

“You don’t slit chickens’ throats,” says Dolorous Edd. “You wring their necks."

“Your Grace,” says Jon, turning to Daenerys, “if you would ride in the center…” 

She nods her white-cloaked head and allows them to form a protective circle around her. Jaime studies her as they pick their way through the trees towards a snowy meadow ahead. Her chin points like a dagger, but her face is calm and assured even as they ride toward the enemy. She can ride better than properly. As Jaime watches, she leans forward to wipe snow from her horse’s eyes. She is just a few years older than Myrcella. He looks away.

Brienne is beside him; they fell in naturally that way. 

Jaime says in an undertone, “If I die here and become a wight, you may fulfill your dream of dismembering me completely."

Not quietly enough: Daenerys smothers a giggle. Jaime ignores her. Brienne does not smile, but some of the tension goes out of her shoulders. 

She spares him a glance. “You’ll be careful.” Half a question, half a command. 

They ride cautiously into the clearing, where five Others stand in a line, just as Jon said. They are tall, perhaps a head higher than Brienne and the Hound. Their flesh and hair shine pale as bone, but Jaime senses immediately that they are not dead. These are no reanimated corpses but living beings, graceful and sharp. Blue eyes peer like frozen stars from angular faces. This close, their armor dazzles the eyes, reflecting the snow and trees in a rippling pattern of glowing white and inky black. They are unarmed but Jaime can see their swords: long, needle-sharp blades that look like honed ice. Worst of all is the cold that surrounds them, which bites through Jaime’s furs and armor as though he were wearing nothing at all. Behind him, Dolorous Edd lets out a groan.

For a moment they all stand there, regarding each other. Jon raises a hand in greeting. None of the Others appears to be in charge, but one makes a piercing noise, ice shattering beneath an ax. The horses flinch. 

“We should charge and kill them,” says Sandor. “They’re outnumbered.”

Jon shakes his head, edging his garron a step closer. “They want something,” he says, eyes on the Other who had spoken. “Why else would they wait?”

He dismounts, his boots silent in the snow. 

Daenerys says, “Perhaps…” but Jon is already walking across the clearing, his movements slow and deliberate as the enemy’s. Ghost bounds forward, his ears pricked. Tormund makes to follow, but Jon holds up a hand without looking back and continues on. The Others only watch.

When he is just out of blade’s reach, Jon stops. “My name is Jon Snow,” he says, his voice ringing loudly against the watching trees. “We have crossed paths before, but never so close.”

The Other at the center makes a chattering noise, talking to one of its companions, Jaime realizes. 

“We can make peace,” Jon goes on. “An agreement of some kind —”

This sets them off, hissing and crackling. Jaime exchanges a glance with Brienne. Her hand is on her sword. 

“Where is Euron Greyjoy?” Daenerys calls out. The Others’ eyes whip to her. “He has stolen my dragon Viserion.”

One of the creatures makes a sound that might be laughter; Jaime cannot tell from their faces. Jon starts to say something, but the Other who had called out to him points a white finger at his sword. 

“This?” Jon touches the hilt. He draws the sword, dark Valyrian steel against the snow. “This is —” 

The Others make no sound as they descend upon him, blades in their hands when they simply weren’t a moment before. Jon is saved only because his sword is already out; he blocks the first strike and reels backward, Ghost snapping to keep the Others at bay. 

Jaime and the rest surge forward, snow flying, blades drawn. He swings Widow’s Wail toward the nearest Other in a swooping, indelicate arc, trying to buy Jon time to find his feet more than he is trying to kill the thing. The creature shrieks at the sight of the Valyrian steel. It ducks, and its own blade darts faster than Jaime can see, slicing his horse’s head nearly all the way off. He crashes to the snow in a storm of ice and gushing blood. Instinct compels him to roll and he does; the frigid sword embeds itself in the place where his head had been a moment before.

He sees the ax before the Other does, brandished at the end of Sandor Clegane’s arm. It takes the Other across one shoulder, the dragonsteel in the blade enabling it to cut deep. Still, the Other whirls, sword raised. Sandor bellows, but Jaime scrambles to his feet and does not see what happens next. 

Where’s Brienne? There — still in the saddle, dueling an Other with long silvery hair. Holding her own; the demon is wary of that sword. Jaime spots Jon and Tormund fighting one, and the Blackfish other. He casts around for Daenerys and finds her a short ways off on foot behind Dolorous Edd, both covered in what Jaime hopes is horse blood. Ed’s blade is a little ways off in the snow. An Other stalks towards them. 

Without thinking, Jaime charges. The snow makes him slow, but he gets there in time to slam his shoulder into the Other’s back. It’s like hitting a stone wall. He staggers back, dazed; the Other doesn’t even turn. Its blade flashes and Dolorous Edd howls, his blood spraying onto the snow. 

Now the Other turns, its sword already whooshing towards Jaime’s head. He raises his own to block it, the force of the impact rattling his teeth in his head. Dancing to the side, he cuts at the creature’s arm, slicing through armor and finding flesh. Jaime bares his teeth when blue blood starts to leak. Pressing his advantage, he swings for the midsection, the thigh, the shoulder. Jaime is snarling, but the Other makes no sound, not even in pain. 

Then Jaime’s boot hits something soft in the snow and he stumbles, catching himself on one knee. Dolorous Edd’s arm. The icy sword comes arcing downwards. He throws out his right arm and catches it on his golden hand with a screech. Frost instantly starts creeping toward his arm. The Other draws back in surprise, but before it can react Jaime stabs Widow’s Wail through its chest.

The Other drops. Jaime climbs heavily to his feet. Daenerys is a short ways away. He offers her his hand, but her eyes widen at something behind him and she cries out. 

Too late.

The cut that takes Jaime across the back is cold more than it is painful. His blood freezes, his bones turn to icicles. He slumps forward, seeing red start to gather beneath him. My blood, he realizes. The sound around him is muted, far away. He thinks he is on his hand and knees but he isn’t sure. Daenerys’s face appears before him, shouting at someone. Then her small hands start to drag him, so slowly. He keeps waiting for the next strike, but it doesn’t come.

Daenerys is pressing something to his back, but the blood keeps coming. 

“Tommen,” he mutters. “Promised I would…”

Then someone is screaming his name and big hands find his face and his hair. He hadn’t even realized there was snow in his hair. The voice attached to the hands keeps saying _no_ , but Jaime hasn’t the energy to figure out what he did wrong.

The last thing he feels is those hands on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY this chapter took so long. it's the longest in the story so far by a few thousand words, but more than that, the condensed semester means that finals are nearly here already and i am. i am doing a lot of work.
> 
> i broke my cardinal rule of fanfiction while writing this, which is: DONT STRESS IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. and i did have fun eventually but to be honest the sex worried me a lot. i rewrote that scene several times and i'm still not happy with it (i feel like there's no urgency?? maybe it's too long), but in the spirit of No Stress i just decided to roll with it. also as a lesbian the whole time i was like is this who we are?
> 
> the hardest part was figuring out how brienne would react. would she be meek, would she be needy, etc. i finally settled on Hesitant But Horny. plus, as jaime notes, she's not afraid of him. she doubts herself twice. first, fretting about her physical appearance, and again later when she gets to the heart of things: worrying that she isn't worthy of love. 
> 
> on an unrelated note, the explanation of the others i've given here is an amalgam of several different theories and honestly probably a lot simpler than what grrm is going for but. endgame is hard. i think i like what i landed on.
> 
> ANYWAY this is all kind of to say that comments are doubly appreciated this time around to quell my slight crisis of confidence!


	19. Chapter 19

Jaime would have greatly preferred to see almost anyone but Sansa Stark at his bedside when he wakes. She is sitting on a tired-looking wooden chair, mending the sole of a boot in smart, meticulous motions. Not a single red hair out of place. It’s gloomy here; dusty, freezing. Jaime is on his stomach atop a scratchy cot, only inches from the stone floor. He has to look up to see Sansa, but doing so sends pain lashing across his back.

He groans, dropping his head onto folded arms. Someone has removed his golden hand. “Are you here to watch me die?”

“Not anymore.” He doesn’t think Sansa has glanced away from her boot. If she is surprised to find him awake, her voice does not show it. “Samwell says you are going to live. The wound itself isn’t so terrible, but you lost a lot of blood.”

“Where’s Brienne?”

Sansa sighs as though she had known he would ask. “On the west wall with three hundred Lannister swords. She has found someone to watch you every moment she cannot. That is why I am here.” Polite distaste. “We cannot spare anyone who can wield a blade at the moment.”

Jaime balls his fist beneath him and pushes himself up, gasping at the icy lightning that strikes his body. It feels like leaping into a lake of frozen knives, each one slicing, searing his nerves. Unnatural blue sears behind his eyes. Sansa says something that he does not hear, and darkness claims him again.

He dreams: slogging between slender poplars, a volley of black arrows embedded in the snow. His feet are dream-slow, and trip no matter how carefully he places them. I’m looking for someone, he realizes, dimly recognizing this overcast night. “Tommen,” he shouts. There are no ravens to lead him this time. His voice sounds warped to his own ears. He is shivering hard; his fingers burn beneath his breath when he tries to warm them. Before he can call out again, his eyes land on a shadowy dip in the snow. The hollow, he remembers this. Tommen will be huddled there beneath a bush. 

He is making his way toward it when he hears a cry. “ _Tommen_ ,” he calls again, but when he bursts over the edge of the hollow it is Brienne on the ground wailing, her hands raking at the snow in agony. A man hunches on top of her, pinning her arms to the ground. His mouth is at her neck — no, her cheek. As though to kiss her, but no kiss ever elicited the cries coming from Brienne’s throat.

The man bites, chews, leans in again. 

Jaime screams, hurling himself into the hollow, spraying snow everywhere. He wrenches the man around and wraps his hands around his neck, intending to enjoy watching the life melt away — and stops. It’s his own face looking back at him: haughty and leering and smeared with blood. Jaime gasps and stumbles backward, looking between his double and Brienne. 

Her cheek is a scarlet cavern, flesh hanging in dripping ribbons. She touches a hand to the blood, staring not at Jaime’s double but at him, his true self. Her eyes: no fear, no anger, only dull resignation. Jaime chokes out her name, backing away, but she shakes her head and reaches for him with red fingertips. “As you are,” she reminds him, and he wakes.

Women’s voices, murmuring somewhere above his head.

“...asked after you,” Sansa is saying. “Then he tried to rise and fainted.”

Jaime attempts to make a noise of protest — _fainted_ — but his body is heavy as lead. Even his eyelids protest when he tries to open them.

“He was shivering, so I found him a blanket,” says Sansa.

“Shivering? Did you let the fire out?” That’s Brienne, speaking in a hoarse undertone. She will have been shouting orders, rubbing her throat raw.

“No, it was burning,” Sansa’s voice is barbed. She does not appreciate being the Kingslayer’s nursemaid. “He hasn’t got a fever either,” she adds, but Brienne’s callused hands push Jaime’s hair back from his forehead anyway. Despite himself, he sighs at her touch.

“I will leave you now,” says Sansa.

“Thank you, my lady.” 

In the silence that follows, Brienne adjusts the blanket drawn across his back, pulling it farther up his neck, although it hadn’t been slipping. Jaime waits for her hands on his face but they don’t come. He could crack an eye open and say something snide, but his throat still burns with bile from his dream, and he fears he might spit out a mouthful of bloody flesh instead of words. He sleeps instead.

When he wakes again he has the sense that it should be night. There is a warm body pressed against his side, and when he looks over he sees Tommen, sleeping sighs fluttering the ends of his hair. Jaime studies him for a few moments, matching their breaths, before easing himself onto his elbows.

“Brienne,” he hisses, for she is sitting, asleep, against the opposite wall. Her eyes blink open at his voice. “Brienne, help me up.”

She considers protesting but only sighs and lifts him so that he can rest against the wall. Jaime holds his breath, worried the pressure will send the cold striking through his body again. Brienne is gentle, though, and settles him so that only his head and shoulders bear his weight. A glance around tells him immediately that they are not inside the castle: the arched ceiling, walls, and floor are rough, uncut stone, broken up here and there by columns and burning sconces. This particular passage is short and a dead-end; a fire crackles merrily at the far wall — too merrily for the prodding black shadows it casts. In the brighter central passageway, he can hear low voices and make out several other sleeping shapes. They curl like cats at a pair of unrecognizable feet and a recognizably dour face. Ned Stark, made eternal in stone. It doesn’t much resemble him, but Jaime recalls that severe, long-faced expression. Stone suits the Starks. Jaime can almost hear the horse hooves echoing in the throne room.

“We’re in the crypts,” he says to Brienne.

She appraises him from the opposite wall. Like he is a mangy dog that she is debating whether or not to feed. Give him a scrap and he might never leave. “Much has changed while you were sleeping.”

She tells it to him in that halting way of hers, and he does his best to listen to her words instead of watching the shadows play with her hair. 

Back in the Wolfswood, the clearing. An overhead strike rent the Other before her from shoulder to stomach. Brienne kicked its body away, then turned at a gasp behind her. She saw the Blackfish splayed on the ground, blood pumping from his throat. The Other he had been fighting was not in sight; Brienne whirled to search for it in time to see it slash Jaime clear across his back.

“The wound stretches from your shoulder to your hip.”

“I know it bloody does."

“Daenerys flung a chunk of ice in the Other’s face and tried to drag you away. That stayed the beast long enough for me to kill it.”

To butcher it, he would hear later. To hack it into unrecognizable pieces.

She’d thought he was dead, and screamed when she saw Daenerys bent over him, kneeling in the spreading blood. Only the cold saved his life. The Dragon Queen pressed handfuls of snow into the wound, shouting for more when they melted as fast as she applied them. Enough of this slowed the blood. Daenerys then bound the wound in her own cloak, and they bore him back to Winterfell slung across the back of a horse like a stillborn calf. They left his golden hand in the snow, white up to the wrist with frost.

“It has been five days,” says Brienne. “Or near enough. Samwell wasn’t sure you would live, you had lost so much blood. Tommen was…”

Jaime grimaces, watching his sleeping son. And you? he wants to ask Brienne, but his mouth is full of stones. 

Instead: “And the crypts?”

“The attacks have been relentless since we returned. It’s as though the Others confirmed what they were waiting for… Jon thinks they wanted to be sure there were Starks in Winterfell. They fight alongside the wights, now — hundreds of them. So many dead…” Brienne swallows. “A day or so after we returned, Euron Greyjoy arrived on the back of his pale dragon and burnt the entire godswood. He was laughing while he did it...an awful, shrieking laugh. After that, Stannis and Daenerys agreed to order everyone to sleep and eat in the crypts. In case he comes back.”

“Euron could have roasted us like game hens inside these walls,” says Jaime. “Why didn’t he?”

“Daenerys and the other dragons have been able to ward him off. And Bran…” she casts a look into the main passageway as though the boy might be listening around the corner. “Bran does something with his mind to keep him away. But I think it’s more than that. The Others want the Starks for themselves; that’s what Bran said they were made for. They will not allow Euron to do it for them."

Jaime scrubs a hand through his beard. “And me, shivering in a sickbed.”

Brienne eyes him. “How do you feel?”

“Cold.”

“I’ll fetch you another blanket.”

“Don’t.” Jaime sighs and knocks his head against the wall. “I suppose I should thank you for saving me, ser. I’m not even a maiden.”

He has never been one for creeping around the subject. Brienne’s expression sours. “You haven’t the strength to waste on being cruel.”

“I’m a Lannister. Cruelty is the color of our blood.”

He is aiming to start a fight — that will make him feel more like himself — but Brienne looks away in disgust, showing him the scarred side of her face. The scar felt puckered and new beneath his thumb that night; her pulse beat acutely beneath the savaged skin.

He stares at his stump, thinking of the dream hand he had tried to wrap around his double’s throat. “Do you wish we had not done it?”

“No.” The word trips out, a dog through a closing door. Brienne shifts. “No, I...wanted to. For a long time.”

“I wanted you too. Still want you.” He curses his voice for scraping over his tongue. The world did not carve him smoothly enough to give petal-soft love. He has too many edges, pricking at pink palms. Drawing blood.

“It was a grieving lie. A nasty one.” They both know this, but he says it anyway. “You don’t make me forget, Brienne. I am more myself when I am with you than I think I have ever been.” He huffs. “For all the good that does anyone.”

“Self-pity does not become you.”

“Does anything?”

She snorts: “Shut up.” Between them, such words are nothing but fond. The firewood pops, stirring Tommen in his sleep. Jaime puts a hand on his back.

“The worst things you’ve said to me,” says Brienne, “I can tell you have said them to yourself first.”

Ah. Almost. That particular item was scrawled in Cersei’s script, shoved in his face on too many occasions to count. When he was sent away to squire for Sumner Crakehall; on her wedding night; when Robert came home stinking of brothels. 

Why bloody else.

“You know me too well, wench,” he murmurs.

“You hurt us both. I think...we are better than that. Than what you said.”

A knife facing both ways. He has long known that Brienne is his mirror; her weak spots reflect his, so easy to find.

“The Seven Kingdoms are unworthy of you, Brienne. I will tell you that every day until my last, if you’ll let me.” 

She shakes her head. “You need only apologize once.”

“Then I am sorry. Truly. You gifted me your trust, and I spat on it. I will earn it back if I can.”

“I trust you,” she says quietly, blunt when it would never occur to him to be blunt. Her gaze holds his, bright as spring, and he knows she means it. 

“I will make it up to you."

She catches his tone. “How’s that?”

He doesn’t have to scrounge to find a wicked grin. In the end, though, he is too weak to do anything but kiss her and fall asleep on her shoulder. You must be better, he tells himself as his breaths slow. You must learn to love better. 

The dream in the woods does not come again.

* * *

When next he stirs it is to a voice that pokes him awake like a delicate finger. Brienne and Tommen are gone. In their place: the Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion. The Dragon Queen perches expectantly on the chair Sansa had been using. She’s weary, Jaime can tell immediately; her hands fold over themselves like stripped twigs, brittle. Her slim shoulders are straight as always, though, and those purple eyes remain calm and unreadable. Tyrion at her side looks ragged by contrast.

Jaime takes in his brother: white-blond hair and darker beard pressed flat against his head, the skin around his eyes chafed dry. He’s been in the cold. “Bloody hells. Is it so dire out there that we need imps to fight?”

Tyrion’s face goes flat. “There are few options when our best warriors are lounging in their sickbeds, dear brother.”

“Enough,” says Daenerys. It had been her voice that woke him. “You quarrel worse than children.”

Jaime thinks of Myrcella and thins his mouth. “To what do I owe this visit, Your Grace?”

“I heard you were awake.”

“I wasn’t, actually."

Daenerys regards him. “I have asked myself countless times these past days: why did the Kingslayer save me? You would have no doubt been safer if I died there in the snow. No one could have faulted you. And yet, there you were.”

“And you think I know the answer to your question?”

“If anyone does.”

Tyrion squints at him, curious what his shit-for-honor brother was thinking when he flung himself across that snowy clearing.

Jaime shrugs. “Perhaps I wanted to see the look on your face. Or to give you pause the next time you consider removing my head.”

Daenerys sits back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Do you ever say what you mean?”

“Have you often found Lannisters truthful?” He half means it as an honest question; she doesn’t seem the type of ruler to enjoy Tyrion’s bladed whispers poking at her ears, clever though they might be. 

Daenerys only sniffs. She looks as though she might say more, but an excited yelp cuts her off.

“You’re _awake_.” 

Tommen comes tumbling around the corner, hunks of snow melting in his hair. He flings his arms around Jaime’s neck, gasping an apology when Jaime grunts in pain.

“Fine, fine,” says Jaime, waving him off. He would rather not have shown weakness in front of the Dragon Queen, but she lets it be, half a smile falling off her lips. Jaime finds one of his own as Tommen babbles on about running messages with Podrick and how Brienne let him ride on her shoulders. After a moment he nudges his son; their position remains precarious. “You’ve forgotten to greet the queen."

Tommen pales. Jaime watches Daenerys to see if she will wave the blunder off, but she waits while Tommen bows to her with all the grace he can muster. Oh, but she wants that throne. He can see it beneath her mild expression, her gentle humor. Peeling away to reveal the bloodred craving beneath. A dragon in exile has nothing left to her but desire. You might call it ambition, he thinks, suddenly understanding why she is taken with Tyrion. 

An earth-shaking roar rattles his thoughts. Daenerys’s movements stutter; she exchanges a look with Tyrion. “Drogon,” she says, rising. “The thief is returned.” 

She means Euron, Jaime gathers, flexing his fingers as she hurries away without sparing him a glance. 

“Come along, Tommen,” says Tyrion. “They’ll be needing us.”

Tommen nods — “Yes, uncle,”— and scampers after Daenerys, seizing a torch off a sconce as he goes. Tyrion pats his shoulder when he trots by and lingers a moment, adjusting his armor. Jaime stiffens, anger pooling beneath his skin.

“I told you to stay away from him,” he says, the words clipped.

“And then you went and escorted yourself halfway to the grave.” Tyrion gives an affected sigh, as though disappointed in Jaime’s lack of commitment. “Lannisters fare poorly without our family, I have found. Would it comfort you to know it was he who sought my company? No? Surely you cannot be surprised — it was only I who showed fondness for him and Myrcella all those years that neither of their fathers had any interest.”

Jaime tries to lunge for him, but the wound across his back seizes, sending him crashing to the ground with a gasp. Like that he is freezing again, trembling all over from the shock of it. Another roar sounds from above.

Tyrion shakes his head, bending over Jaime like he is a particularly interesting rock. “I’ll send for Samwell.” He hefts the ax strapped across his back and is gone.

* * *

The next weeks pass in a fog of pain and cold. Samwell Tarly comes periodically to tend to the wound on Jaime’s back, applying salves, removing the stitches, changing the bandages when they seep. The wound is slow to heal, slower than any he has taken before. A wrong movement sends him into a shivering fit, begging for blankets, another log on the fire. Brienne will hold him or have Tommen rub his hands, but nothing warms him until the fit subsides. Jaime isn’t the only one: Sam tells him everyone who takes a wound from the Others’ terrible blades feels cold this way, though none have been injured so severely as Jaime.

“Most don’t live to tell of it,” says Sam, rubbing at one round cheek. 

Tommen blanches.

Jaime feels it is not a moment too late by the time he can fight again. Sam’s visits have been increasingly sparse as the wights and the Others continue their relentless attacks. The crypts now echo with the groans of the wounded, the dying, the grieving. Jaime cannot spare Tommen from service now; his son joins the other children in fetching arrows and pushing carts of corpses to what is left of the godswood for burning. 

He himself returns to the walls. Brienne’s worry for him is obvious; he cannot quite be insulted by it when he still feels the occasional tickle of ice in his blood. If it were anyone else, he thinks, when she steps in front of him to meet flashing steel. But it is not. If the wights had blood left to bleed, he and Brienne would be soaked in it; as it is, they stumble back to the crypts as covered in grime and moldering flesh as the corpses within.

The godswood is husk, a graveyard marked by blackened trees. Viserion’s fire scorched even the weirwood, whose menacing face looks no kinder beneath a layer of char and oozing red sap. They still burn the bodies there, heaps of black bones wrapped in golden shrouds of flame. Tommen returns to his pallet with soot-covered hands. 

They fight, they eat, they sleep.

"How goes your quest for glory, lad?" Jaime asks Loras over a bowl of mostly hot water.

Loras screws up his mouth. He has shorn his mane of brown curls almost to the ears, giving him a more severe look, though his jaw is smooth and hairless as ever. "Better than yours." 

"My plan was always to live. I rather enjoy living. Your plan, as I understood it, was to die spectacularly and make your father proud."

"I think — I am making use of myself here." It's true. He and Podrick have continued their drills, and Jaime has seen Pod gain gracefulness from their lessons, a fluidity in his motion that Brienne lacks for all her strength. Loras drills the greener boys and girls too; everyone able to heft a sword is needed these days.

"I suppose I ought to thank you for allowing me to come." Loras looks as though he might be sick, and rubs at his bad leg. "I thought I might spend the rest of my days sitting on cushioned chairs beside my father."

"And be forced to marry." Jaime sets down his empty bowl and raises an eyebrow. 

"I never will, I swear it. I am a third son, House Tyrell can carry on without me. Besides, it was supposed to be Margaery who married into renown." 

That chills the air between them. "You could go to Essos after this," offers Jaime. "I have heard of men there who are —"

" _Don't_."

"— able to make use of their Westerosi glory." Jaime tilts his head. Loras scowls. "Buy a manse with all your rosy gold, enjoy the climate, tell stories about the halcyon days before you became a cripple."

"I would open my throat to escape the boredom," says Loras. "And so would you."

Back to the battlefield. Euron and Viserion clash with Daenerys and the others in the skies above Winterfell. The dragons’ fire lights the sky in flashes: yellow and red and green. Daenerys does her best to lead him off, but Jaime suspects that Euron has little interest in the castle at all; it is her torment he wants. Samwell reminds him that the two were supposed to wed, once, as payment for the Iron Fleet’s service. Euron looks worse each time Jaime catches a glimpse of him; he is a pile of sunken cheeks, blue hands, and ropy white hair, strung together by whoops of hysterical laughter. 

He’s becoming one of them, whispers Pod.

Once, an archer punches a flaming arrow through one of Viseron’s milky wings. The dragon squalls like a babe, whips its head around, and blasts a gout of flame that ignites two hundred Lannister men before they have time to beg for Mother’s mercy. Loras mutters later that the man who did it was lucky to die there rather than face the Dragon Queen’s wrath. 

The cold makes Brienne’s once-broken arm ache. It makes Loras’s limp worse. It reminds Jaime of death slashing across his back.

He has killed some spectacular number of men in his life, but he has never known death this well. So many men die that it becomes useless to mourn, at least to Jaime’s eyes. He jokes easily among them, can slip smoothly in and out of their conversations, yet he never lingers, never leaves his palm too long against the hot door. He has a particular aversion to being burned. 

Brienne knows them better; she commands the Lannister men in his stead, gives them the orders by which they live and die. Well, that is not quite how it works, but the wench won’t hear a word otherwise from Jaime. They love her, once they learn to see her properly. They can’t help but glimpse the summer sky in her flashing eyes. Her sword is a blur; the wights and the Others cringe before it. The songs will do her no justice. The men shout her name and scrape up their strength.

Her tears fall as spring rain while their bodies burn. You couldn’t have saved them, Jaime tells her, gently as he can, the two of them watching crimson cloaks turn to ash. It is a lesson he learned too young: even the truest knight cannot save everyone. “And you, sweetling, are the truest of knights.”

When they are not fighting they are in the crypts, in the side passageway that they have made their own. It is far from the entrance, dim and mostly quiet. They share a straw mattress hauled down from the guest house. Jaime strings up a blanket to give them what privacy is possible, and they spend hours tracing the lines of each other, finding new shapes to love. Jaime feels sick with it each time Brienne smiles at him, says his name, reaches for him. He is an ill man with a pulpy, pounding heart. And she loves the meat of him. They love each other raw.

To pass the time there are stories — Brienne wants to know about Arthur Dayne, Jaime wonders what she knows of Ser Duncan the Tall, Tommen pesters, “Can we hear the one about the bear again?” He and Podrick love this tale, and will sit, hands wrapped around their knees, with their eyes wide as owls as Jaime and Brienne pass the story between them. _And then I thought: what in seven hells do I do now?_ The boys laugh at all the right parts.

Other times they make up songs, or play guessing games, or toss a leather ball back and forth. Anything to distract from the raging battle above. Tommen and Pod turn round and round between Jaime and Brienne, trying to catch the ball as it flies over their heads. Sometimes Brienne will kneel to let Tommen sit on her shoulders and throw to Jaime. Jaime shakes his head in mock exasperation, but she just smiles at him and Tommen both.

“He’s a good boy,” she says to him one day, when he is wiping melted snow off their armor to keep the rust away. Sansa and some women have carried down a massive basket of bread from the kitchens, and Tommen is dashing to and fro to help them distribute it. “He will be a good man someday.”

Jaime grunts. “He seems half a man already.” Tommen is ten, maybe one-and-ten, and growing out of his chubby cheeks. 

“There is time yet.”

This is no place for a childhood; perhaps nowhere really is. Jaime thinks of his own: stealing away with Cersei, dealing bruises to the other boys, learning not to flinch under Tywin’s blows. He grew up above warm seas and all the riches in the world, but no one ever carried him on their shoulders.

Tommen laughs at something down the hall. Ned Stark’s stone eyes glower at the noise — did the bones Jaime sent north ever make it here? He’d been blithe about it; one set of bones is as good as any other, he told the party. But there is something about an empty tomb, about the children Ned and Catelyn Stark raised only halfway.

He says of Tommen, “I think he may be the best part of me.”

Brienne knocks her shoulder against his. “You are the best part of you.”

He stops keeping track of the time, only realizing how long they have been at Winterfell when the babes start to be born, wailing bundles of blankets with pink or brown hands sticking out. It must be a year now, or near enough as makes no matter. 

Brienne likes the babes, though she holds them as though they will crack like eggs in her hands. She won’t break, child, says one of the mothers. The women laugh. Brienne cradles the wriggling bundle closer, her eyes wide when they land on Jaime’s.

“Impatient wench,” he chides later, when she runs her hand down his chest. “Can you not wait until we sail for Tarth for me to put an heir in your belly?"

She pauses and sits back a little, the straw in the mattress squeaking under her weight. “They are lovely, are they not?”

He never thought to see this side of the woman who traipsed him in chains all over the Riverlands. 

“Hmm. Terribly noisy creatures. Did you know they’ve a soft spot on their heads?”

“That’s two things you hold in common.”

Jaime laughs; Brienne catches the hand he swats at her. 

She pauses, playing with the ends of his fingers. “You’ll return to Tarth with me, then?”

“Try to keep me away. I have been disinherited, don’t you recall? The Rock is no longer my place, nor Tommen’s. It is Tarth with you, or become an aging, crippled sellsword.”

“I hoped you would come.” A smile wobbles at her lips. “I feared you would say no if I asked.”

Jaime settles against the blankets and pulls her down after him. “Brienne, when is the last time I told you no?”

* * *

Their numbers dwindle. Some tens of thousands of men crammed into Winterfell and the surrounding town when the war began; now, Jaime guesses they don’t make eight-thousand. And the wights keep coming.

Jon and the Your Graces are desperate. Winterfell’s stores are dangerously low, and Daenerys’s dragons have to fly farther and farther afield to haul back the occasional scrawny hart. They’ll start eating us soon, says Loras. Stannis’s men will beat them to it, replies Jaime. They’ve all heard that tale.

Stannis is thinning like an aging head of hair; his jaw must ache from clenching all the time. His army, already decimated, is all but gone, and his competition for the Iron Throne looks a sight better than he does these days. Brienne reports that he is sharp as a knife in the war councils, slashing at Jon, at Daenerys, at Bran.  
  
“When will it end?” he snapped at Bran one day, towering over the boy in his chair. “Are you not supposed to know all? When comes the end to this black nightmare?”

Bran said nothing at first. He is oft sequestered these days; Jaime glimpses him only occasionally in a particularly dreary section of the crypts, long red hair spread over his direwolf’s gray pelt. 

Guards cloister off these meetings, which take place in the deepest, emptiest part of the crypts. As though Euron or the Others might have their frozen ears pressed to the earth, listening. 

Bran only shrugged. “The Others want us Starks. Euron wants me above all...I did what he could not beyond the Wall. Some men cannot live with failure.” He looked at Stannis. Brienne thought this was clever of him. 

Stannis said, “Are you suggesting we give them what they want?”

Jon and Sansa didn’t like the image of offering their brother to Euron like a roast boar on a platter. There are so few Starks left.

“We’ve held out this far,” said Jon.

But the dead do not tire. Brienne is unflappable before the men, but in private, she becomes increasingly dispirited. Jaime makes no effort to conceal his pessimism — except in front of Tommen. He and Brienne still talk of Tarth, and a life after, but it feels ever more like a dream. Jaime sometimes returns from the walls to find Brienne dozing on their mattress, her brow furrowed even in sleep. He could almost avert his eyes at the sight, so precious is it to him, but he is a rapacious man and cannot deny himself these indulgences. The future he imagines for them never feels so out of reach as it does in those quiet moments: him, leaning heavily against the wall; her, mouth scrunched in disapproval at some dream. Desperation swells in his chest. The things he would do to smooth that crease in her brow, to ensure that she sees her sapphire seas once more.

* * *

The babes are beginning to toddle when the wire holding up all of Winterfell snaps. 

The dragons clash high above the castle, Daenerys keeping Drogon and Rhaegal at a distance as always, warding off Euron more than attacking him. A blast of fire to cut off his approach, a tangle of claws when Viserion starts to dive. However Daenerys communicates with her children, she has kept them from harming their brother outright all this time. She wants him back. 

But Euron and Viserion, with his cloudy white eyes, have no such reservations. Jaime, sprinting from the south wall to the north along with Brienne and some twenty Lannister men, does not see it happen, only hears a ghastly shriek. He slides to a stop and jerks his gaze to the sky in time to see a summer-green shape plummeting through the air. 

Rhaegal writhes as he falls, one of his enormous wings leaden and useless. He vanishes behind the east wall with a crash that sends a column of snow into the air. Jaime gapes for just a moment before snapping back to himself. He yanks Brienne’s arm — “Come on!” — and they keep running. 

Above, Euron is circling closer. Daenerys’s screams rise above the dragons’ roaring and men shouting at each other. Fire sears the air all around; the dragons blast freely at each other. 

Jaime catches sight of Tommen dashing towards the godswood with a torch in hand. He calls his son’s name and snatches him by the collar when he doesn’t turn.

“Get to the crypts,” he shouts over the din.

Tommen hesitates. “Podrick is still in the godswood.”

“We’ll fetch him — _go_. And be bloody quick about it.”

Tommen nods and hands him the torch, which Jaime tosses onto a pile of dead wights as he watches his son’s golden head bob toward the lichyard. Brienne has gone ahead with her men and Jaime makes to follow them, Widow’s Wail clenched in his fist. But before he has gone two steps, Viserion lets out a great bellow and spews a storm of flame that engulfs the First Keep and much of the northeastern wall. Most of the poor souls are instantly incinerated, but Jaime glimpses a number of flailing arms: soldiers turned to torches. He remembers the smell of Rickard Stark cooking in his armor. 

A voice, young and pleading, scritches the inside of his head.

Jaime Lannister, it whispers. Kingslayer. Help us. 

The voice is familiar; he knows instinctively, perhaps preternaturally, from where it comes. He hesitates, looking after Brienne. Then he wheels and heads toward the broken tower. Corpses litter the courtyards: stiff, contorted limbs seared red and black. Targaryen colors. 

When he reaches the broken tower he is relieved to see that the crypts across the way are bolted securely shut. Near the doorway to the tower lies a slim, blackened figure, arms flung outward. And just inside, sheltered by weather-beaten stone: Bran Stark.

He is crawling toward the stairs best as he can, elbows scraping over the damp floor. His direwolf looms huge and concerned, whining when Jaime ducks inside. 

Bran looks up; his eyes are wide. “Stannis,” he says, trying to point outside the door. “He saved me. Threw me inside.” 

Jaime blinks, but avoids looking back at the slender corpse. He picks Bran up, cradling him like a babe in his arms. “Up,” says the boy, and Jaime obeys, taking the crumbling stairs two at a time out of some intuitive haste. He pauses in the room where Bran caught him and Cersei fucking, where Bran nearly possessed him to walk out the window, but the boy wants to go higher, to the very top of the tower. 

Jaime frowns. “We’ll be exposed there. What in seven hells are you doing, boy? Why did Stannis bloody Baratheon die for you?”

Bran shifts in his arms. “I can stop Euron. I told Jon so, but he wouldn’t allow it. I just need to get closer — his mind is strong, he keeps me out otherwise.” He blinks up at Jaime. “This is the tallest tower in Winterfell.”

“Euron will char us like onions up there.” 

“Leave me then — I don’t care. I have to try. I’m supposed to try.”

Jaime curses. Gods help the next soul who speaks of prophecies in front of him; he has had enough for a lifetime. _Supposed to_ this, _meant to_ that. Bran had said something similar to him all that time ago, when he first arrived at Winterfell. You’re meant to be here.

Out the window, another blast of flame hits near the north wall. That’s where Brienne was supposed to be, Jaime remembers with a wave of sickness. The fire is red this time. Drogon. Daenerys has finally unleashed him, damn the men who crawl like ants below. 

He carries Bran to the top of the tower: a flat, snow-covered roof surrounded by short crenellations like broken teeth. 

“Put me down,” says Bran, then waits for Jaime to leave. 

But he stays, standing above Bran with the thrice-damned direwolf, sword gripped in his hand. It may as well be a twig for all the good it will do to Viserion at this distance. Below, the battle seethes, spots of fire burning all over the castle. In the darkness, Jaime can barely make out the horde of wights throwing itself at the walls; an inky shadow that requires no sun. And here and there: the pale flash of the Other’s swords.

“What now?” 

Bran is scanning the sky, following Viserion’s white form as it cuts after Drogon’s dark one. “I’m going to go now,” he says mildly, and before Jaime can ask what in seven hells that means, Bran’s eyes glaze over, becoming foggy and blank. Jaime stares. The direwolf — his name is Summer — sniffs Bran’s limp form, but appears mostly unconcerned. 

Jaime stands over him, feeling useless, feeling a fool. Somewhere down below, Brienne is fighting for her life against the dead while he guards the little lord of Winterfell. You never dreamed of this when you freed me from the Young Wolf’s dungeon, did you, Cat? Her hair was the same color as Bran’s, fanned out and growing damp in the snow. 

The boy’s eyes snap open. “I can’t reach him,” he coughs. “His mind is too strong, too...convoluted. He’s keeping me out.”

Jaime watches some of the torches on the east wall flicker out. “What about Viserion?”

Bran frowns. “Euron has trapped his mind. He’s probably broken by now; he could go mad if I release him.” 

Then don’t, Jaime starts to say, but Bran’s eyes have already gone hard. He settles back into the snow. “I will take him for myself,” he promises, and goes limp once more. 

The dragons are circling back now, Viserion skimming just ahead of Drogon. From here, Jaime can hear Daenerys and Euron shouting back and forth, their voices torn and indecipherable across the wind. Euron holds a white spear with a glimmering crystal point. Jaime realizes that it is the same icy substance as the Others’ blades. A shiver of cold skitters down the tender scar on his back.

“Come on, Bran,” he mutters. Only the darkness and Daenerys’s continued harassment of Euron has kept them safe thus far. But the columns of flame scorch the air ever closer. Will I leave him? Jaime wonders, staring down at Bran’s small body, trembling with some unseen effort. He hasn’t the time to wonder: Viserion’s head snaps abruptly around and catches sight of Jaime standing atop the tower.

The white dragon’s eyes are no longer milky; they are golden and crazed. Bran has freed him, Jaime understands, but the dragon does not take kindly to his mind being poked at. He flaps his great wings with jerky movements, as though discovering them for the first time. Euron howls something, but Viserion roars and slices through the night air, heading directly toward the broken tower.

His maw opens, fire glowing within. Jaime grits his teeth, crouching over Bran. What is he if he leaves now? He supposes he will never know. His eyes flutter shut, summoning Brienne’s shy smile, Tommen’s bright peals of laughter — but death doesn’t come. 

Viserion shrieks, but pulls up at the last moment. Bran shudders between Jaime’s feet, whimpering softly. The pale dragon twists violently in the air; whether he is trying to throw off Bran or Euron, Jaime isn’t sure. 

It seems for a moment that Bran may simply compel Viserion to fly off somewhere into the vast night. Daenerys and Drogon veer, belching fire across the wight army. Viserion joins, and a cry of relief and confusion goes up from the Winterfell side of the wall as yellow flame joins Drogon’s red. 

Then Viserion convulses, pitching through the air. He seems to return to himself briefly, then jerks again, as though something is trying to burst from beneath his skin. Bran’s hands are clenched into fists. Viserion roars, a terrible, screeching sound full of fear and confusion. The beast flaps once, twice, flying straight up into the sky. He vanishes into the black smear of cloud, Euron clinging to his back. 

Jaime waits, holding his breath. Then the white shape comes hurtling straight toward the wight-strewn ground outside the castle. He realizes what Bran is doing the moment before it happens and takes an involuntary step back. Viserion comes to himself for a heartbeat; he moves to throw out his wings, but it is too late. He swerves, slamming into the north wall. 

The dragon is still for a moment, crumpled like a dead moth among the fallen stones and snow. Then he creaks back to life, and even from the tallest tower of Winterfell, Jaime can see that his eyes are glowing blue.

The wights pour in through the gap in the walls like too much blood. Into the godswood. Into the courtyards. Jaime shoves at Bran, whose eyes snap open. 

“I couldn’t hold him,” he gasps, hands gripping at Jaime’s arms. “I couldn’t — I tried to get him to land outside the walls, but he’s mad and he wants to _live_ —”

“Shut up,” grits Jaime. He picks up Bran again and runs him back down to the tower room, concealing him as best as he can behind some fallen bricks. “Protect him,” he says to Summer, and leaves the direwolf crouched over Bran’s quivering body.

The battle has moved inside the castle walls. Jaime hacks a path through wights on his way to the godswood. Brienne had been on that wall, Brienne might be… But he spots her among the trees, tall and dark blue and surrounded by a mass of wights. Podrick is by her side, his face smeared with blood and soot. Jaime cuts his way to them, helps drive back the wights to give them a moment of respite.

“ _Jaime_.” Brienne’s eyes, usually calm and still as pond water, are stormy. She clutches him. “You vanished, I thought you were dead, or —”

“I’m here, love.” Jaime touches her cheek; she has lost her helm, and her face is gray-brown with grime. He pulls off his own helm and shoves it at her, strapping it on himself when she protests.

“Sers,” shouts Podrick, pulling them aside barely in time to save them from being crushed beneath one of Viserion’s clawed feet. 

Jaime stumbles backward. “Where’s Euron?” he asks as they circle around, trying to avoid the cobalt fire erupting from Viserion’s jaws. 

“Jon killed him.” Loras is at his side, voice hoarse from shouting or screaming. He is limping worse than Jaime has seen him since the months after his injury; he must have fallen on that leg, or taken another wound. 

But Jaime will not send him away now. Men are firing arrows, tossing spears, but they clink like fine dinnerware against Viserion’s scaly hide. Every inch of him can kill: spiked tail, black teeth and claws, blue fire, beating wings.

More wights tumble toward them. Jaime hefts his sword and casts a glance at Brienne. She is peering at Viserion from behind a tree with such intensity that Jaime fears for a moment that she won’t see the wights all around her. But she does, and fights her way through them until she is at Jaime’s side. 

“Valyrian steel will cut through his hide,” she says, taking off a wight’s head with one stroke and kicking its still-moving body away.

Jaime ducks a spear and drives Widow’s Wail into another wight’s stomach. Podrick darts in with a torch to burn it. 

“What do you plan to do?” he asks, knowing better than to dissuade her. 

“Kill it.”

He spits. “You are bloody insufferable.” 

An Other approaches; they charge together, swords raised. Viserion roars behind them, crashing through the trees. Jaime twists to avoid the Other’s blade. He shoves the creature — it is like pushing a castle wall, but it catches the Other by surprise, long enough for Brienne to slash across its thigh. It stumbles to one knee, and Jaime kicks the sword out of its hand. 

The Other rolls away from his killing strike, one hand flashing out and catching Brienne around her right wrist. She shouts and tries to wrench free, but the creature’s grip is like iron. It knocks Oathkeeper away and pulls her down with one hand around her neck, fumbling at the straps of her helm. Jaime roars, charging and plunging his sword into the Other’s stomach over and over until it stills. 

“Your helm saved me,” she gasps as he helps her up and pushes Oathkeeper back into her hands. 

Jaime feels almost ill with relief, but the feeling dissolves when he sees her gaze fix on Viserion. She starts toward the dragon with deliberate strides. He follows, but she shakes her head and pushes him away. 

“You cannot climb,” she says, nodding at his bare stump.

Jaime's jaw sags. “You’re going to climb that thing?”

“It will not die if I stab its feet.” 

Jaime calls after her, but she is already running. Like hells if he is going to stand and watch. He casts around for Loras, and the two of them follow her, diving into piles of snow as Viserion sprays his fire. The godswood burns once again, trees flickering blue and yellow and red. It is nearly as bright as day. 

He loses sight of Brienne, but skids to a stop straight in front of Viserion. “You’re mad,” cries Loras, but then he spies Brienne slipping around the dragon’s feet and understands. He joins Jaime in flinging ice, torches, fallen swords — anything underfoot at Viserion, trying to catch his attention. The dragon glares, and opens its mouth to destroy them. Jaime and Loras, with the instincts of those accustomed to near-death, both dive forward, landing near Viserion’s claws as the fire cooks the air behind them. 

Jaime slashes at one bone-white leg and growls when Widow’s Wail draws blood. Viserion bellows. Jaime skitters out from beneath him and sights Brienne, halfway up the dragon’s back, one hand wrapped around his spikes. His breath catches in his chest.

“Bloody hells,” says Loras. He scoops up a dead man’s spear and hurls it in a perfect arc into Viserion’s maw. The dragon screams, flinging its head back in agony. When it looks down again, Brienne is perched precariously at the back of its head. 

It thrashes, trying to throw her off, but Brienne has a steel grip and cannot be shaken. She shouts something that Jaime misses, raises Oathkeeper, and plunges it into the back of Viserion’s skull. 

The dragon twitches, then collapses in a heap. Brienne leaps neatly from his neck. Men hurry in with torches, and in moments Viserion is no more than a raging bonfire. 

“You mad wench,” snaps Jaime, embracing her roughly. She has removed her gloves and greaves to climb better, and her hands are shredded and bloody from Viserion’s scales. 

All around, the battle still rages; the Others are touching their icy fingers to the ground and raising the forgotten dead that sleep beneath the earth at their very feet. Still, Jaime finds this a moment of peace: his head tilted against Brienne’s helmet, her arms tight around him.

Then someone shouts, high and panicked: “ _Wights in the crypts."_

Jaime slows, a boulder falling through his stomach. Brienne’s eyes widen; her mouth moves to form the shape of his son’s name.

Then he is running, shoving aside wights and men alike. Winterfell’s most vulnerable flood into the central courtyard, women and children and old men, their faces torn and frantic. The dead fall upon them, but Jaime does not stop. He calls Tommen’s name but knows in his thundering heart that his son is not among them, that their private passageway was too far from the entrance. 

Jaime pushes his way to the ironwood doors just as three Unsullied slam and bolt them shut, and brace them with their backs. Even over the chaos of battle, Jaime can hear pounding fists and desperate keening. 

He orders the Unsullied to move. They do not — who is he to command them? Their expressions are carefully blank.

He shouts for them to move. They do not. One of them says, “The demons are close. We cannot fight more of them.”

Brienne is at his shoulder, adding her pleas to his. Jaime’s hands are shaking almost too violently to hold his sword. The cries behind the door turn to wails of pain, then to silence. 

His vision goes white. He cuts through the Unsullied like wet paper, like bed linens, like the man he used to be. One of their spears catches his shoulder, but he feels no pain, only pressure. Brienne yells something behind him; he thinks she will wrench him backward, but she is right there as he pries open the iron latch.

A few sobbing survivors — all women — tumble outward, scrabbling to safety. But mostly come the wights, in a reeking gray mob. They surge into the courtyard, hungry, chattering. Their hands grab at Jaime’s armor, but he throws them off like so many flies.

He and Brienne stumble through the corpses, the slippery blood. The wights empty fast from the crypts in search of more vulnerable prey. In moments they are alone, the only sounds their pounding boots and Tommen’s name.

They find him in their side passageway, hidden behind the dark blanket that Jaime strung up to give himself and Brienne some privacy. The wights tore the blanket aside and discovered him there. 

Jaime kneels, touching his fingertips to the mess of blood. The golden hair. The once-pink cheeks, now the color of ash. The green eyes, kinder than his mother and father’s both. Brienne closes them with a steady hand.

“Jaime,” she says. 

He replies, voice carefully flat as a blade, “I told him to go.” He looks up, sees her face cracking like watching a stone shatter his reflection. “You heard it. Brienne, I told him to —”

Then she has to pull him away from the body, take the sword from his hands, talk fast in his ear. 

* * *

He does not remember what she said, or the rest of the battle. He found himself at some point standing in a circle of dead wights, men staring at him as though he were aflame. 

There are too many dead for proper mourning. They cannot bury the bodies anyhow, not unless they want to fight their mothers and brothers and sons on the morrow. He carries Tommen to the enormous pyre in the godswood and leaves before the body, so fucking small in his arms, catches alight. A Lannister should have a golden shroud woven from cloth of gold, not flame. 

Brienne catches his arm as he goes, searching his face for a brief moment. She says, “He loved you.”

Whatever she sees in his face, then, she lets him go.

Tommen was once a king. They buried his crown in the snow beneath Casterly Rock, and when summer’s breath someday warms the world, some merchant or hedge knight will find it dented in a damp puddle. And it will be too small for his head, because it was made for a boy whose feet dangled off his throne. And the boy will never come to claim it, for he too is buried in the snow. A frozen mouse, dead in its tunnels. Kicked up by a passing boot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "the summers die one by one/how soon they fly/on and on/and i am old/and will be gone"
> 
> this is such a cliche but i'm slightly nervous to post this chapter? i like tommen, you guys have liked tommen, and now we say goodbye to tommen. 
> 
> i wrestled with whether or not to kill him for, embarrassingly, months. actually, i pretty much knew i was going to kill him but i couldn't decide if i had the guts. which sounds silly now that i say it — this is only a story, after all. in all honesty, i highly doubt poor tommen will even make it this far in the books, but i couldn't resist dad jaime, who sees the good parts of himself in his son. jaime is all about mirrors, reflections. he sees himself in cersei, in brienne, in loras, and in tommen. and now, as he muses to brienne, the best part of him (to his mind) is gone. 
> 
> if it makes anyone feel better, i think jaime is unfortunately a goner in canon (no idea when or how, but i have a feeling), but i will not be offing him here despite my half-hearted commitment to make this a semi-realistic continuation of canon. because that would make me sad. 
> 
> also. i am home for the holidays and will hopefully be writing um. faster.


	20. Chapter 20

Up in the broken tower: the highest tower in Winterfell, Bran had said. Facing deliberately away from the window, which overlooks the godswood and the lichyard and the entrance to the boarded-up crypts. Snow flutters warily in, as though knowing there is a beast locked away here, waiting to scorch curious adventurers with the fire in his belly. Of course, the story is backward. The maiden is meant to be the one in the tower, the dragon a scaly coil at its base. Then a knight with flowing hair comes galloping along on a white horse, scrambles up the tower using a few curiously convenient stepping stones, and pulls the maiden from her despairing funk with a kiss. 

That was always Jaime’s favorite iteration of the tale, anyhow.

The snow fell fast and thick as they burned the bodies. Soon the castle looked almost snug beneath a pristine white quilt, which soothed the blackened walls and tucked away the bloodstains and smothered the last of the fires. Winterfell as it was. Tramping through the courtyards, you could almost imagine that Catelyn Stark might glide over the covered bridge, calling for her sons to stop tripping at the heels of Ned Stark’s retainers. 

He sits against the wall and gazes at a sliver of night seeping through a crack in the roof. There are no stars to count; for once he is glad. In his mind he pours over his misdeeds, locating each red-brown mark on the tidy ledger, accounting for it with a fingerful of golden dragons on some reproving scale. 

He finds that he has noted his sins mostly as names: Rhaella and Rhaenys, Tyrion and Tysha, Bran, Tywin, Margaery, Myrcella. Cersei, Cersei, Cersei. 

His shoulder throbs where the Unsullied’s spear found a gap in his armor; he has been refusing milk of the poppy.

The place where his hand used to be hardly pains him anymore; even the once-tender lump of scars has faded to a numb white lump. Criminal, that. It ought to hurt forever as it did those first few days after the arakh sheared it off. He should spend his days gagging on the rot and his nights choking down wave after wave of agony while the leering stars sear holes in his upturned flesh. When he drags himself about, the smallfolk should gawp at the black, dripping blood and hug their meager harvests closer and mumble amongst themselves that not even a dog deserves to suffer that way. 

He cannot decide whether Tommen was a transgression or retribution. 

_We’ll fetch him — go. And be bloody quick about it._ He stares up at the slash of night until the darkness fills his vision, trying to remember if he had said anything else before he sent Tommen off, but there is nothing; that was it. If anyone should understand the anticlimax of death it is him, who always dreamed of dying in a crack of lightning, but who knows that more often the Stranger lurks around strange corners. Knights who never so much as limped after a battle will break their necks hawking with their sons; kings choke on their wedding feasts; the sort of men who come along once in a thousand years die on the privy. Rarely is there a grand declaration at the end of it all. 

Still, Jaime knocks his head against the stone and imagines a hundred different things he might have called after his son’s bobbing golden head. No one has ever accused him of having a slow tongue; he might have said anything, anything else. _And be bloody quick about it_. As though he was sending Tommen to fetch a fresh pitcher of ale. 

He briefly considers that his son might have died bravely, but scoffs the thought away. Tommen, with his ruddy cheeks and limpid eyes, did not die a brave death. He died hidden and trembling and wondering why his father sent him into the monsters’ embrace. 

His brother appears at the top of the stairs, misshapen face looking like something crumpled in the flickering light of the torch he holds above his head. Has he been grieving? It is difficult to read him in the shadows.

Jaime studies his stump arm, trying to make a fist and feeling the old twisting cramp as the effort dies at the end of his wrist. It doesn’t hurt enough.

“Oh gods, Tyrion,” he says without looking up. “I think I deserved it all.” 

Tyrion comes carefully forward, standing the torch in a crack between two fallen bricks. “Brienne said you would be here. Is this where you’ve been stealing away? Forgive me if I am not the knight you prayed would come to your rescue.” 

His words are flippant, but he hasn’t called Brienne _your bedfellow_ or _the Hightower of Oldtown_ or any of his other choice selections, so Jaime gathers that he is attempting solemnity. He watches as Tyrion settles himself a short ways off, leaning against an icy slab of stone with his gloved hands folded in his lap.

“What do you want?” he asks. 

“To talk with my family,” replies Tyrion. He pauses and runs a hand across a freshly shaven cheek. “There are few enough of us left.”

Jaime lets that fall between them. It isn’t precisely correct: there remain any number of Lannister cousins and nieces and nephews prowling beneath the Rock. But the family they loved well is all but gone in one way or another. 

He cannot resist: “You’ve done your part in ensuring that.”

Tyrion grimaces, and Jaime realizes he is thinking not of Tywin, but of Johanna, bled dry in the birthing bed. His brother is pragmatic enough to have never grieved their mother much — but all the same, that is Cersei’s jab. 

Tyrion says, “And here I came clutching so many platitudes, ready to assure you that the blame lies only on the enemy’s shoulders.” 

“That isn’t what you came here to say.”

“No, it isn’t,” agrees Tyrion. He shrugs, clambers stiffly to his feet. “I don’t know how you can sit there so still in the cold, brother mine.” He starts to pace, picking out a neat pathway from one side of the tower to the other, turning primly on his heel when he reaches the wall. “What I did come here to say is this: everyone wishes to hear the way you tell things. Only you were with Bran, with Viserion, in the crypts.”

“Ask Brienne; she knows it all. Or Bran, for that matter.” 

“Bran hasn’t woken.” Tyrion’s voice is flat. His keen glance adds: and you would know it if you didn’t hide away inside.

A group of Unsullied had found Bran in the broken tower after the battle, slumbering by all accounts peacefully under Summer’s crouched guard. The direwolf stood in a circle of dismembered wights, bleeding from a dozen different wounds; his teeth took off several men’s fingers before Arya Stark coaxed him away. He’d died of his wounds a short time later.

And Bran did not wake. 

“Who is everyone?” asks Jaime.

“The queen. The Unsullied. The leader among them wants your head on a pike for killing his men. I admit he makes a rather good case for it. Jon has been hanging rapers and murders without a trial. And you, unleashing how many wights into the open castle to save so few? Of course, the queen needs little convincing when it comes to your fate.”

Jaime thinks again of the wavering scale.

Tyrion pauses with his foot on the stairs. Jaime waits for some variation of his barb from so long ago: you think your sorrows are the only ones worth grieving. Instead, Tyrion sighs. “Jaime,” he says, “blame yourself for anything else. You’ve more than enough disgraces to choose from, believe me.”

“Believe you?” Jaime’s head comes up sharply. Whatever Tyrion sees in his face provokes him to take half a step backward. “You have never borne a stone of guilt in your life, brother. It is always the fault of someone else — never a foot that _you_ put wrong. And look how high you’ve risen, weightless.”

He is on his feet and does not recall standing up. His brother seems so small from here; even Tommen stood taller.

“Yes, how high I’ve risen.” Frost coats Tyrion’s words. “And how far you have fallen. Her Grace will speak with you on the morrow.”

* * *

When he wakes, his head is pounding, and Brienne is already dressed in a Tarth-blue tunic and speaking with someone at the door. He slits an eye open and watches the lines of her: straight spine, level shoulders. Sturdy, despite it all. Or because of it. She closes the door with a creak and goes about her business, tossing a log on the fire, buckling Oathkeeper securely around her waist. She is so precious to him; each moment feels like theft. 

“I know you’re awake,” she says. Jaime closes his eyes all the way. “The queen’s men are asking for us.” 

“Asking? How pleasant of them. I rather expected to wake with a spear shoving at my arsehole.” 

“Get up. And put this on — you dribbled wine all over your breeches.” 

She tosses him a deep crimson tunic that someone must have packed in his things when they first marched for Winterfell. Jaime sits up and pushes the blankets away, shuddering at the brush of cold air across his bare shoulders. The cold had numbed, then pained, every inch of his body by the time he grew fed up with chewing on Tyrion’s words. He straggled into their quarters in the guest house to find Brienne asleep, Oathkeeper propped within easy reach of their bedside. The wine looked so tempting sitting there on the table. Warmed over the fire, it chased the ache from his fingers and chest, whisked away his ability to dwell on any one subject for more than a few seconds at a time. A goblet of Dornish always was the Lannister vice. By the time Brienne stirred awake and sat up, his whole body felt enveloped in a thick, clumsy haze. 

Without preamble, he’d said, “Do you know what Bran said to me when I took him to the tower and…” He made a vague gesture over his head, meant to represent how the boy toyed with his mind.

Brienne passed a hand over her face, trying to scrub some wakefulness into her eyes. It had probably been too long since she’d slept, with every precious hour lately spent repairing the collapsed wall. All she managed was a scowl and: “You’re drunk.”

“He said, ‘there is so much more you can lose.’ Or maybe he said that after I left him there. I can’t remember. What did he mean by that?”

“He was angry with you. He had good reason to be.”

Jaime had lurched to his feet, goblet still in hand. In an instant of dissociated agitation, he experienced a sense of doubling, the same eerie feeling he sometimes had as a child when watching Cersei. Is she me, or am I her? Images of Cersei these days hardly come to mind absent of the wine goblet perpetually in her hand; she glides, red-cheeked, in his memory. This is what she looked like, he had thought, studying himself at a distance. As though catching his reflection in an enemy’s blade.

And this is what she felt like, he thinks now, groaning at the fuzzy pain in his head. The tunic Brienne has produced looks well enough on him that a nudge of vanity lifts his chin; then he shakes his head. Your son is in the grave, Kingslayer. A roaring lion picked out in golden thread glitters on his breast. Daenerys will get to behold at that as she contemplates his fate — again. 

Jaime turns so that Brienne can regard him. “Perhaps a touch unwise to remind Her Grace so emphatically of my allegiances.”

She frowns. “You might wear your armor.”

“She’ll think I am afraid.” He buckles Widow's Wail around his waist anyway. Your Graces are terribly volatile creatures. He tugs on the tunic, the red deep enough to appear black in the firelight. 

“We’ve no reason to be afraid,” says Brienne, although that isn’t what he said. She smooths the tunic across his shoulders, passes the backs of her fingers across his cheek. 

Brienne is the one who is afraid, Jaime realizes, reading it in the tight set of her jaw. She is worried for me. He presses a kiss to her cheek, wishing he could show her the blank expanse inside him, where fear and most everything else dissipate like morning mist.

Still, he wants to appear himself for her, so he says airily, “And when she asks what became of her Unsullied?”

“We must tell her the truth. No good ever comes of a lie. There were witnesses, and if Bran wakes and tells her what truly happened… No, we must admit that we killed them.”

Jaime blinks, drawing back to examine her freckly face. “What are you saying? _We_ certainly did not kill them.”

“Of course we did.” Brienne cannot decide if he is attempting to be politic. “I cut the throat of the man who injured your shoulder. When Tyrion came asking after you, I made sure he knew what I had done.” She pauses. “Jaime, do you not remember?”

It would seem that he does not. He knows that Brienne followed him closely into the crypts, does not recall her aiding him against the Unsullied. He had been far within himself by then. Perhaps it is his memory trying to be kind to him: yes, Kingslayer, you assuredly did defeat three men alone, and with your off hand at that. 

“Well,” says Jaime, “I’ll not have your head roll alongside mine. Daenerys does not need to know it all.” 

Stupid, noble wench. How many times will she step into a noose that she could easily slash aside? Jaime curses her thrice-damned honesty, and Tyrion’s deceit. His brother had slyly forgotten to mention that Daenerys would be wanting to hear from Brienne as well.

“We did nothing wrong,” insists Brienne. “There were survivors in there, women who would have died elsewise.” 

Some of them had found him and Brienne after the battle, tearful gratitude streaking clean stripes through masks of blood and grime. Their grasping hands only reminded Jaime of the wights’ freezing fingers, and he shook them off. 

An impatient voice shoves at the door. Jaime kisses Brienne once more, softly, on the lips, and the two of them turn to go. He stops with his hand on the door and half turns. “You cared for him more than his mother ever did.” 

She offered the first gentle hand Tommen had ever grasped. She killed for him more than once, might now die for him. Jaime still finds himself thinking of the day in the Red Keep: the sun slanting through the windows, Boros Blount scowling in the corner, Tommen pushing Ser Something into Brienne’s bemused expression. 

“He was a sweet child,” murmurs Brienne, so sadly that Jaime feels compelled to stamp out some of his own grief. “He reminded me of you.”

His aching head blurs the room; he blinks it clear, nods at Brienne, and they go to face the Dragon Queen.

* * *

She and Jon Snow are in the lord’s room of Ned Stark’s austere Great Hall, two blots of silver and black ink seated in straight-backed chairs at a long, low table. The hall is dark, only a few torches lit here and there, no silver moon to glint against the gray Stark banners along the walls. What light does filter in from outside the castle comes through distorted and odd; dragonfire warped the windows into purple-green prisms. A pair of Dothraki guards stand ready at the ends of the table, and Jon’s white direwolf gnaws on something charred in the corner, but the room is otherwise empty. No glowering Jorah Mormont, whom Brienne calls _the slaver; he must be dead._ Not even Grey Worm, the man who wants their heads, is anywhere to be found.

The Unsullied leave them with a hard glare at the door. One signals for them to stand before the table and they do, feet planted squarely in a puddle of torchlight. Brienne is solid as a tree beside Jaime, her jaw set and her voice ringing as she greets Jon and the queen. 

“Your Grace,” adds Jaime, not bothering to bow. To Jon he gives a sharp nod. Nobody really knows how to address Jon. The boy looks even longer in the face than usual, as though sorrow has been tugging on the end of his chin. At his side, Daenerys is as raddled as Jaime has ever seen her; the expression on her pretty face reminds him of nothing so much as a child’s teetering block tower: held upright by desperate hands alone. 

Her eyes, nearly black in this light, do not seem to register that Jaime did not bow. Instead, she says, “I was sorry to hear about your son, Kingslayer. So often, this life steals from us what lies closest to our hearts.”

“His name is Ser Jaime, Your Grace,” says Brienne. 

Jaime closes his eyes and stifles a groan. Brienne has a habit of saying aloud the rare thought that he keeps to himself. Now is hardly the time to be twee about titles of address, however. A lesson you learn in the presence of royalty: they call you what they want.

Daenerys arches an eyebrow. Brienne’s freckles disappear behind a flush, but she sets her jaw and meets the queen’s gaze. 

“We earn any number of names throughout our lives,” says Daenerys placidly. “I myself have been called everything from Breaker of Chains to Daughter of Death.”

“You are nominally wealthy, _Khaleesi_ ,” says Jaime, partly because it amuses him, mostly so that the queen stops looking at Brienne.

“I lost a child of my own, once,” says Daenerys as though she had not been interrupted. “Rhaego, I called him, for my brother slain on the Trident by the Usurper. I thought I would never feel such agony again, that the world had done its worst to me when I was only a girl, and every pain thereafter would be warm rain against my flesh. Your enemies can take so much from you, but there is no pain like losing the blood of your blood.”

Jon shifts in his chair. “Dany…” 

This more than anything pricks Jaime’s attention. Dany. A casual, familiar word from those cadaverous lips. 

Daenerys ignores Jon, holds Jaime’s eyes. “Then I lost another child. And another, before I could finish screaming. So tell me, Ser Jaime, how it came to be that we both lost what we hold dear.”

Oh, but she is a shrewd one. Even in her grief, she drags him closer: _we_ , _our_ , _us_. Jaime knows this game, has watched enough clever lords and ladies draw in their enemies with a warm fire and an affable clap across the shoulders. Then, when his fingers are warmed and soft over the flame, the enemy lets slip what he vowed to share only among friends. 

Still, he finds himself docilely reciting the events of the battle. The facts could be pliable if he wanted them to be, but he tells all as he remembers it: Bran’s voice in his head, Stannis’s scorched corpse, Bran insisting that he could enter Euron’s mind, standing over the boy as Viserion swooped in, Bran losing control of Viserion and sending him veering into the castle walls. Brienne fills in the fighting on the walls, and Jon supplies some of the rest. Ned Stark’s white-haired ward pulled Euron Greyjoy thrashing from the rubble and dragged him to Jon’s feet and begged to be the one to kill him. Jon did it himself instead. 

Jaime and Brienne take turns describing the fight with Viserion’s wight. That accursed moniker — Brienne Dragonslayer — will have undoubtedly already reached Jon and Daenerys’s ears, but Jaime still winces to hear Brienne detail how she climbed Viserion’s back and drove Oathkeeper through his skull. She names the sword when she describes it; at this, Jon nearly smiles. Then, all that is left to tell is the wights in the crypts and the murdered Unsullied, and they are done.

“It was mostly northern women who survived the crypts,” says Jon in his stony rasp when Jaime finishes. You can almost see his exacting steps skirting the Dragon Queen, but Starks have rarely chosen concord over the truth. “Winterfell thanks you for that. And for protecting my brother.” 

Daenerys quite resolutely does not glance at Jon in surprise, but Jaime senses that she is piqued. The bastard of Winterfell condoning the Kingslayer’s actions before the queen of the Seven Kingdoms? But she only presses her mouth into a knife-wound slash and says: “I am but a young girl and know little of the world, yet I have learned that life and death often walk...well, not quite hand in hand, but along the same circular path. One flattens the way for the other.” 

“If you are going to execute us, Your Grace,” says Jaime, marveling at his casual drawl, “I request that you skip the philosophy. Speaking for myself, I would prefer not to die dwelling on some abstruse notion of yours. Sounds dull.” 

Daenerys’s eyes flick back into her skull; she briefly looks like a child once more. 

“I brought you here before me because my friends asked it of me,” she says after a brief pause, “but I have heard nothing today that changes what my heart told me when first I heard of what happened. If I found myself in your and Ser Brienne’s position, I say without shame that I would have done the same. Yes, to my own men, if necessary.” 

“We must value life equally as we dread death,” adds Jon, nodding at Brienne. His face is a colorless chip of bone. When at last the people of Winterfell discovered what truly happened to Jon at the Wall, Jaime had asked him what death felt like, at the moment rather fancying the notion of eternal sleep. But Jon had only furrowed his brow and said, “It doesn’t feel like anything at all.” 

They are dismissed. Brienne bows and makes to leave, but Jaime hangs back. 

“Can you think of no punishment?” he asks, incredulity pitching his voice upward. He is speaking to Daenerys, pinning her with his eyes. Surely there must be something that can be done to him.

“I already told you,” says Daenerys. A shadow touches her face: a memory of the past, or perhaps dread of the future. “There is no worse punishment than losing a child.” 

* * *

The Others might have ended the war in a final decisive sweep had they pressed the attack after the great battle. Inexplicably, they seemed to withdraw, perhaps reassessing after Euron’s death. The inner and outer walls have been under constant construction these last days; every soul left alive in Winterfell knows the end will be swift if the attacks recommence before the damage is repaired. 

Jaime tries to wander, find some dark, forgotten corner of the castle, but Brienne halfway orders him to join her at the north wall under the pretense that Winterfell cannot afford to lose another able body. “We must show the men that we have not given up hope,” she says, steering him towards the godswood.

“Speak for yourself, Dragonslayer,” replies Jaime, dropping the cloak of alacrity he’d donned for Jon and Daenerys. “To tell it true, I’ve accepted that the sun has set for good on this gods-forsaken world. We had a good run of it, but I’m afraid our enemy is ready to charge, and we have broken our last lance.” 

Brienne whirls on him, sudden anger darkening her face. They’ve stopped between torches under a covered passageway. Stone archways frame the courtyard beyond, and blue-black icicles the size of shortswords overhang the openings like some queen of winter’s frozen hair. There is no one in sight in the courtyard save the youngest Stark sibling, throwing a bone for his monster of a direwolf. This would have been a bustling part of the castle, once, but there are no longer enough people to crowd every corridor. The wind is the loudest voice in Winterfell, these days. 

The wind, and Brienne. “How can you say such a thing?” she snaps, swiping a tangle of hair out of her face. “How can you give up now and let it all be for nothing?”

Jaime shrugs, trying to conjure back his indifferent air. “I am done playing the bloody hero. This is the life heroes get; do you see that now?” He flings his hand outward, indicating the night, the cold, the waiting death. “This tale doesn’t end with a song and a merry toast, Brienne. It ends with our funeral pyre.” 

“Then what do you plan to do? Drink yourself to madness like —” She bites off the sentence before its barbed tail can strike, but they both know what she wanted to say.

Jaime laughs. Cersei: the doorknob that snags the end of your shirt when you storm out in a huff; she never fails to make a bad mood worse. “Now there would be a fitting end.” 

“Shut up.” Brienne’s long fingers curl and uncurl at her sides. “You’re doing it again, being a craven because you think being brave is too hard. You would let them die for nothing. Well, I don’t care if —”

“And what if it is? What if it is _too hard_? Is that so terrible? True, no knight of the tales ever found his quest insurmountable, but you’ll understand if the yarns of childhood have been somewhat diminished for me.” Bitterness stains his voice. “You expect so bloody much of everyone. You cannot draw a breath without spitting up gallant maxims in everyone’s faces. Can a man not take a moment to grieve in Brienne of Tarth’s presence? Acting the true knight is not so easy for all of us as it is for you.” 

“You think it is easy for me?” Brienne’s voice is abruptly quiet, compact: a balled fist. She searches Jaime’s face for contrition and finds none. “You must comfort yourself by imagining some of us are born facing the light and others only the abyss? That way, you never feel too badly about turning your back on the world, for you were never meant to be embraced by it.”

Jaime sneers and says, “And here you thought I didn’t believe in fate.” But he is thinking of his dream beneath the weirwood: Brienne’s sword blazed with light even as his sputtered and left him with only steel to hold back the night. 

“I told you this long ago,” says Brienne. “Each of us must turn this way and that in search of the light. Always! At every crossroads. Hopelessness is what comes easy; it is everywhere, like the horizon when you are at sea.” She pauses, blinking rapidly. “We are different flesh over the same bones, Jaime. Do you think I have never despaired as you have?”

His shoulders sag, anger collapsing like wet sand. He has always imagined her like the sapling that grows in the shadowed forest: instinctively and inexorably pushing upward toward the sun. Nothing could sway his wench. Not death, nor anguish, nor the sweet prospect of letting someone else do the hard work this once. And of course it comes easy for her; how else could she be so bloody good at it? At carrying on? Everything Jaime has ever been good at has come naturally to him — riding, swordsmanship, doing battle.

Fool of a Lannister. From the moment she poked her shaggy head through his dungeon cell door, he has been underestimating her. All this time later, and she is still stronger than he ever conceived.

He meets her astonishing eyes and recognizes his own exhaustion shadowed there. “You really think any of this will mean something?”

“It must. I don’t mean the gods or Bran’s prophecies...but the lives we have lived and the choices we have made.” She shifts under the intensity of his stare. “I know you do not believe in anything.”

“I believe in you,” says Jaime. How not?

Brienne’s mouth wobbles every so slightly at that, but she only touches his shoulder, lifts a torch from the wall, and leads them into the night. 

* * *

  
They are hauling stones to repair the wall when Bran wakes up.

Viserion’s body crushed the inner and outer north walls into rubble, leaving a gap wide enough for thirty men to ride abreast. A good section of the glass gardens has been smashed to glittering dust, rendering the whole place useless. The rows of vegetables and fruit trees that have sustained the castle thus far had to be rapidly harvested before the cold crept in and seared black burns on their tender flesh. No light shines in the yawning hole beyond the gap; it is like staring at a wall of dragonglass. 

The Starks might have once sent to White Harbor’s quarries for new bricks, but the Manderlys — what is left of them — are here in Winterfell, and the White Knife that would have been used to transport the stone is frozen solid. They are reduced to culling bricks from odd places about the castle: the sept, the kennels, the crypts. Jaime works beside Brienne and a subdued Podrick, pulling down one wall of the stables, loading the bricks into a damp wooden cart, and pushing it laboriously through a slushy rut through the godswood. 

“I can help,” Podrick is insisting after the third time Brienne suggests he take a break. She flashes a glance at Jaime when she says it. He has the distinct sense that she is trying to relent in light of their spat. If he were in better humor he might have merrily volunteered to take Podrick’s respite for him. The boy’s cow-brown eyes are huge and determined in his earnest face. They have all grown thinner, but between the scanty diet and an ill-timed growth spurt, Pod is downright spindly, his elbows and knees sharp beneath swaths of fur. The three of them have been pushing the cart along with great effort, but Pod’s long legs keep sliding in the snow and tripping them up. 

Jaime looks away as Brienne and Podrick start bickering. Pod is older than Tommen was; he’s scrappier, more stubborn. But his childish lilt reminds Jaime forcefully of Tommen and of all the times he or Brienne had to growl for the boys to stop whispering to each other and go to sleep. When Jaime turned away from the funeral pyre, Pod’s face had been icy with tears.

Someone yells for Jon; it’s Sansa, leaning out of the library tower where Bran has been sleeping. Jaime watches as Jon comes striding over from the smithy, Ghost a glowing shadow at his heels. A smaller shape that Jaime recognizes as Arya Stark detaches from a dark patch of trees at the edge of the courtyard and follows them into the tower.

Brienne sends Pod off in a dejected huff with instructions — orders, really — to find a bowl of something warm and a bed. Then she and Jaime join the steady trickle of men bringing bricks to the north wall. The only sounds as they walk through the torchlit godswood are the crunching of snow beneath their boots and the occasional huff of breath. Jaime keeps his eyes determinedly on the path ahead as they pass the dingy lake of damp ashes near the weirwood. 

“You’re cross with me,” says Brienne, grunting as they maneuver the cart through a rut.

Jaime knows she is trying to distract him but lets it be. “Hardly.”

“I am not sorry for what I said. You needed to hear it.”

They are at the wall now. Brienne lets the cart drop to the snow, and they start passing bricks up to the teams tasked as builders. “Unless I talk in my sleep, I don’t recall asking for an apology,” says Jaime.

“You do talk in your sleep,” grumbles Brienne, hefting a brick the size of a horse’s head as though it weighs no more than a babe. “You always have. Even in sleep, you cannot let the rest of us have a moment of peace.”

“Are you implying that I don’t put you to sleep soundly enough, wench?” Jaime gives her his most vulpine grin and tries to ignore how it feels like a tear in his face. “Mayhaps next time we retire I’ll try…” 

Something thaws a bit between them as they work, Jaime describing every lewd activity he can think of, Brienne alternating between flushing deep scarlet and shaking her head in annoyance. Still, the whole thing has an air of performance, for they both know that when they trudge back to the guest house tonight, Jaime will only press a soft kiss to her lips, murmur her name, and feign sleep while her breaths slow, Jaime willing her chest to rise again each time it falls. It is all he has the desire to do since Tommen’s death. Every time he looks at Brienne, he hears Bran’s sad voice reminding him: there is so much left you can lose.

Bran — that’s right. When he and Brienne come dragging back in search of what passes for a meal at Winterfell, Jon is leaving the library tower with Sansa at his elbow and a rapidly buckling expression on his face. Jaime only glimpses it for a second as the Starks go by, heading for the Great Keep, but it is long enough to understand that whatever Jon heard inside the library tower left him shaken. He glances at Brienne, sees her staring after Jon’s vanishing figure.

“Don’t suppose we shall hear much of what that was about,” says Jaime. “Jon has a habit of…” His voice trails off as a movement in the window of the library tower catches his eye, the same window Sansa had latched open not an hour before. Bran Stark’s face peers out: long and white and very much awake.

* * *

Brienne is called to a war council meeting not long after. Jaime attempts to sleep, but finds that her absence disturbs his rest just as much as her presence. He shuts his eyes, and without her warmth beside him immediately plunges into the dank, cold crypts — the screams of wights scraping across the walls, Tommen’s blood cooling on his fingertips, Brienne whispering in his ear while he begged for the sword she’d taken from him. He isn’t sure what he wanted to do with it. Hush, Jaime, listen to me, I have you, you must breathe, he cannot hear you, listen to me, I have you, wake up, wake up, wake —

He shatters into consciousness, already reaching for a sword that isn’t there, because Brienne knows him better than that. He’d reached with the wrong hand, anyhow. She is sitting at the side of the bed, wearing an unreadable expression. Why had he ever thought her uncomplicated? 

“Jon and Daenerys are calling a meeting in the Great Hall,” she says, searching his face. “They are going to announce how they plan to end the war.”

Jaime actually laughs at that, a sharp shake that makes his injured shoulder twinge. “Will they mind if I announce my plan to turn Cersei into a beetle when they are done?” Brienne says nothing. He realizes she is serious and sits up. “Brienne. What did Bran say?”

She shakes her head. “Best to let Jon explain it all.” So she has been pledged to silence. Jaime knows better than to try to wheedle it out of her; he’d have better luck plowing seedbeds in stone.

What is left of the army of the living fits into the Great Hall with only a bit of shoving and grumbling about the smell. Brienne cuts toward a table close to the dais, where Podrick and Loras are already seated amid a crowd of Lannister men. Loras eyes Jaime as he sits.

“Is there anything to this?” he asks.

Jaime shrugs.

Jon Snow is up on the dais, looking less like a man who is about to end a war and more like a boy who has just been smacked about the head with a shield. Jaime watches him turn and mutter something to Bran, trying to remember if Ned Stark had allowed his bastard to sit among his half-siblings when Robert’s court visited Winterfell. It seems like the sort of thing Ned Stark would do. 

Daenerys raises a hand for silence. She, too, appears stricken. Has something happened to Drogon? No, she is not grieving; her mouth is set in a thin slit, her eyes shaded as she waits for the room to quiet. She’s angry, betrayed. Jaime knows what betrayal looks like better than almost anyone. 

“Long we have fought,” she begins, her voice betraying none of the ire across her countenance. “Long we have suffered, stood together to hold back the night. We have been the flame in the darkness. And now our war will come to an end.” 

She nods at Jon, who climbs stiffly to his feet. Jaime shoots a questioning glance at Brienne, but her gaze is fixed front. Jon is long dead, but Jaime has never seen him look so hollow. Jon passes a hand across his face, takes a breath, and explains. And Jaime understands.

* * *

  
The living wait in steaming cluster in the godswood, just behind the yawning gap in the north wall. Jon and Daenerys have ordered an end to the repairs. If this doesn’t work, the state of the castle won’t matter.

Brienne’s expression is hopeful. Jaime tries to feel that way too, but the hope in him died with the light in Tommen’s eyes. The first time he slept after the battle, a terrible dream tormented him. He lounges on the Iron Throne, golden armor scraping against pointed sword tips. What slush-brained bastard forged this abomination with the swords pointing every which way? A page announces that the king is here, and a solemn man comes in, his feet clanging loudly on the ground, his frown one of pure judgment. “Move aside,” he tells Jaime, raising the gold-shrouded bundle in his arms. Jaime, who never wanted the throne, only to see who would claim it, slides out of his seat and watches the man place the bundle on the throne, delicately peeling back the shroud to reveal a boy’s face: round and fair and quite obviously dead. His limp feet dangle off the edge of the throne.

Jaime woke up, then, but the dream stayed with him into his waking hours. Like now, when he should at the very least be sharing in the men’s anxious humor.

“Which of the Seven do we pray to for his to work?” mutters Loras. He is leaning on his sword, for he refuses a cane.

“All of them,” replies Jaime, but he says no prayers.

They emerge all at once, a smoky mass of bodies, blue eyes glowing like the stars that once filled the sky. The Others walk before them in a ghostly silver line. Jaime shifts his weight, his hand straying toward Widow’s Wail. If Bran and Jon are wrong, the Others will rush forth and slaughter them like so many cattle.

Jon and Daenerys step beyond the walls on foot, no swords in sight, Bran and Tyrion riding just behind them in special saddles of Tyrion’s own fashioning. Jaime cannot tamp down a pang of unease at the view of his brother riding undefended toward the enemy. He peers into the inky black sky but cannot see Drogon. If all goes wrong, the black dragon will swoop down and carry the delegation to safety. And then what? Jaime wonders, flexing his fingers. If it were him, he would have Drogon fly south to the Neck, where he could regroup with the Starks’ old allies, damn the straggling survivors in Winterfell. That is what he likes to think he would do, anyhow.

A few Others come forward to meet Jon and Daenerys. They are dressed differently than the rest, in long white tunics of sorts and strange silver wreaths atop their heads. Jaime lets out a breath. Bran had been right. How he had known the Others would come to bargain can only be answered by whatever magic painted the future in his dreams. And this had been a long dream. 

“Bran spoke to them while he slept,” Jon had said in the Great Hall. “He spoke with the Night King, the first Other created by the children of the forest. The Night King was one of the First Men. The children turned him by pressing a dragonglass dagger into his heart. He became something not quite dead, but not quite alive either. He was their touchstone to the world of men. A bridge of sorts. But the First Men had not come to bargain.”

Euron Greyjoy had been the touchstone this time, but Euron had his own crazed agenda. Euron wanted to burn the world; the Others only want to take it back.

Now, Jon gestures at the castle, but Jaime sees one of the Others shake its head emphatically. Fair enough. It is a wretched place, Winterfell. Jon hesitates, exchanging words with Daenerys. Then he nods and steps forward, Tyrion nudging his horse alongside. To Jaime’s surprise, Daenerys goes with them, vanishing into the mass of wights, which parts like a curtain for them. According to Brienne, only Tyrion and Jon were meant to negotiate this stage of the plan. Jaime catches her eye as Bran comes riding back alone. She gives only a small, baffled shake of her head.

“Whatever Bran said to the Starks in the library tower, Jon told it to Daenerys,” says Brienne in an undertone as Sansa embraces Bran and encourages the crowd of onlookers to go to their beds. “She has been odd since.” 

“She doesn’t trust Jon to do this? That poor bastard knows the Others better than any of us ever will.”

* * *

Back in their chambers: he is feeling jagged, cruel, sick of himself. Even as he and Brienne strip off their armor, splash their faces with water, ready themselves for a try at falling asleep, Jon, Tyrion, and Daenerys will be negotiating an end to the war. The thought of riding cheerfully back to the South, stopping in at Tarth, visiting the cousins at Casterly Rock — it puts a rotten taste in his mouth. What is a warrior without a war? What is a father without his son? What was the bloody point of it all if only to leave the fight behind? A man like Jaime, he was born to fight all his life. There is no after; there are no better things. 

The best of us stand no better chance in war than the worst. And Tommen was the best of us. The day in King’s Landing that they discovered that Loras was alive, Jaime had stared at his son’s pudgy hands gripping the Iron Throne and thought: I won’t let them have this one.

There is nothing just about war, he muses, watching Brienne inspect the ragged knife scar across her stomach. The cause can be a true one, but the fighting and killing take good men as often as cruel ones. Justice is in the choosing, as Brienne had told him. In choosing to continue on, even grouching the whole way. And he has planned a fair bit of grouching. 

Jaime comes up behind Brienne and hooks his head over her shoulder, sliding his arms around her waist. He breathes in the scent of her skin, snow and leather and the metallic trace of armor. 

“What is it?” she murmurs, leaning into him.

He doesn’t quite know. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had since his mother died, a feeling he thought he had burned out of himself. The desire to sink into someone’s arms and trust that they will keep the world out. 

“I think I miss him,” he says, voice hoarse. 

“So do I,” whispers Brienne. Without Jaime saying anything more, she enfolds him into her arms, his ear pressed tight to her magnificent, thundering heart. 

When they wake, Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion have returned, their mouths set in grimly triumphant lines. The plan had worked. Jaime mutters, “May this be a better wedding than the last one I attended.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas! everyone pretend like i slid this under the line on time. actually it was finished last week but i wanted it to be a christmas gift and then i forgot.
> 
> now here is my second holiday present to you all (and to myself, because i've wanted to do this for a while).
> 
> this story is coming to an end...um, pretty soon. well, relatively soon. there will probably be 2 to 3 more chapters depending on how much i can control myself. there is SO MUCH that i haven't included for the sake of keeping this thing coherent. my the gift/request if you want to give me a christmas present: leave a comment with a prompt for a missing/extended scene from anywhere in this story and i'll fill it in. feel free to request any pov you like - Brienne, Jaime, Sansa, Tommen, whoever is in the scene that you would like to hear from. leave multiple requests if you want! just be sure to specify the chapter so i can orient myself. i can't promise i'll get to all of these (it almost certainly won't be until after the main story is finished), but i will do my best and i think i'm really gonna enjoy it. hopefully you all will too!
> 
> the missing/extra scenes will probably be stored in a collection under some NBTLH-related name, so they will be easy so find as they come. that's all! happy holidays everyone.


	21. Chapter 21

The ceremony transpires with less pomp and significantly less blood than Jaime has come to expect from weddings.

Watching from the crowd in the blackened godswood, he can almost feel Genna Lannister’s breathy whisper tickling his ear: this whole affair is rather dry, Jaime dear, don’t you think? And he would have to agree; there is no warm blood to rouge his cheeks.

Jon and his bride say their vows in the manner of the old gods, facing each other before the charred lump that used to be the weirwood. Rheumy red eyes and a sunken gash of a mouth combine to make the wretched old tree appear altogether disgusted by the whole affair. Can you blame it?

Someone without much enthusiasm has shoveled the snow to create what is ostensibly an aisle, but functionally a barrier between the living and the dead. Could they not have done away with the dark shadow of ash that yawns off to the side? Each time Jaime avoids looking at it, he feels once-rosy cheeks cooling beneath his palm. A few errant snowflakes stick in his hair, but for the most part all is still, the sky a silent chasm, gaping.

The Others arrived dressed in what Jaime assumes passes for finery among them: shimmering fabrics adorned with pale crystals and strange twisting ornaments that glint in the firelight. They stand with unnatural stillness on one side of the path, glowing blue eyes turned toward the weirwood. 

The living wear armor, and do not take their eyes off the dead.

This war will end the way most wars do — with a marriage. As Genna used to put it: the start of one war is the end of another. Perhaps it is no surprise to you, sweetling, that the marriage bed is its own battlefield.

It was Jon Snow’s plan, nudged along by preternatural insight from Bran. Together, the boys schemed to replace Euron Greyjoy with Jon: a new bridge between Westeros and the Others. “Who better to broker this peace,” Jon said, “than a man who is neither living nor dead?” Jaime had to resist the urge to leap onto the dais and slap his hand across Jon’s chest: does his heart beat? 

Tyrion explained it all to the people of Winterfell. A septon would have found a less skeptical audience at a brothel. Jon will take an Other for a wife and live with her people beyond where the Wall once stood. He will serve as a liaison of sorts, negotiating any problems that may arise between the living and the dead. “I shall not be their leader,” Jon is at pains to establish. They have slain the children who created them for their terrible purpose and will not be ruled again. 

The land called the Gift belongs to the Others and the wildlings jointly; it is the closest thing to repatriation Jon can grant. At this, the surviving wildlings erupted into furious shouts. Why should we listen to a kneeler? You would make us share our land with abominations. Jaime looked around for the big white-bearded fellow who lead them, but could not see him; he must be dead. Pity, he was good for a laugh. Then Jon rose and said flatly that the wildlings had lived among the Others beyond the Wall in times of violence for hundreds of years. If they can survive war, they can survive peace.

If only it were that easy, thinks Jaime, eyeing the crystal blades on the Others’ hips. He and Brienne selected a place close enough to the front that they could get a look at Jon’s bride, but far enough back that they don’t have to appear interested in the ceremony. That had been Jaime’s reasoning, anyhow — Brienne’s shoulders are straight, her eyes front, a hand on Podrick’s shoulder. 

Save Jon and Bran, it seems that she alone has any sympathy for the Others: the land they lost, the masters of the forest they hunted and butchered in an attempt to escape the magic that fostered within them an insatiable desire for revenge. Jaime might have agreed with her, once. Before the crypts.

Jon’s bride is a head taller than he, nigh indistinguishable from the rest of her kind in appearance; Jaime realizes only now that there have always been women among them. She grates out her vows in a crackly, breaking-ice voice that makes Podrick squeeze his eyes shut and sends cold fingers trailing down the scar on Jaime’s back.

Jon takes it seemingly in stride, swearing his own vows with a hand on the weirwood tree and a curtain of practiced calmness drawn across his long face. You have to admire the boy. When most men say their wives are demons… 

Then it is done. Only a few hesitant claps split the air on the side of the living. 

“What I fail to understand,” says Jaime as the crowd trudges back toward the Great Hall for the feast that allegedly awaits, “is why. Why do it? His brothers are too young or too crippled to be powerful for a while yet. His sisters are sisters. The way he lead us through this, he would have the support of the entire North if he claimed Winterfell for his own — bastard or no. Hells, Daenerys could legitimize him as Warden of the North. He might be her Master of War. For that matter, Daenerys needs him to vouch for her, maybe rally the northern banners to help her confront Aegon after all this. Why broker a peace that strips him of everything?”

“Mayhaps he values peace above station,” says Brienne, as though it is that simple. For her, Jaime knows, it would be.

Perhaps. Perhaps Jon does value that. But Jaime thinks of his expression when he left Bran in the library tower, of the way Daenerys came along to the negotiations when that was never the plan. No, something happened.

Winterfell’s larders are all but empty, so Jaime is surprised to see pots of stew with real meaty bits set on the tables of the Great Hall. A gift from the Others, whispers a man who saw them approach bearing wild boars easily across their shoulders. It is all Jaime can do to keep from wolfing down the bowl in front of him while it is still hot enough to sear the skin off his tongue.

A wave of resentment like nausea stops him. They have been hard-pressed to flush up a scrawny stag from the Wolfswood, much less a drove of pigs. 

Casting around the hall, he sees matching sour expressions. Scattered mutterings rustling the air like a stiff breeze. “Are we really going to sup with such creatures?” asks Arya Stark, none too quietly. The Others do not seem to hear or care, settling themselves at one long table near the center of the room. 

Jon and Daenerys make toasts to peace, but Brienne observes that the dais seems tense, a few presumably high-ranking Others sitting straight-backed among Daenerys and the Starks. Tyrion is nowhere in sight.

Wine and ale relax the atmosphere a bit. They are some of the few things in which Winterfell remains well-supplied; there has been little occasion for feasting over the last year and a half. Real food and drink put the survivors in good spirits despite the Others’ frigid presence. Even Brienne fills her cup at Jaime’s cajoling. If there was ever a time to drink, wench, this is it. Soon they are flushed about the face and Jaime is raucously reminiscing with the men, raising his voice each time Brienne interrupts to correct his embellished telling of his or her deeds. 

“Do you want songs sung of you or not, wench?” he asks in exasperation after she swats his cheek for claiming that she used Oathkeeper to sever Viserion’s head. 

“True ones,” she says, so primly that they both laugh. 

The wine warms Jaime’s stomach, loosening his grin and making his laughter ring louder than it has in ages. He is far from in his cups, would not risk it with the enemy lounging so near, but he feels an ease about himself that he hasn’t since _before_. His mind strays far from grief, far from politics; he follows some sunlit pathway without shadows. He has often found himself wandering this path in Brienne’s presence. For the first time in a long while, he dares hope it may lead somewhere.

“Ah, Brienne,” he sighs. Her broad face shifts when she looks at him: the setting sun softening against the horizon. He passes the back of his hand across her scarred cheek.

“There are few things more miserable than a loveless marriage,” he says, tilting his head toward Jon and his wintry bride. He bore witness to enough of them at court. The king and his wife; the other king and his wife. “We could do better," he says. “You and I. What say you to wedding an aging cripple?” 

Brienne’s eyes widen. Jaime tries to conjure a flippant affect, but finds he hasn’t a breath of humor to stir this question. 

“What about it, Brienne?” he presses quietly when she bites her lip. The wine seems a distant memory now. “Marry me. Make a proper lady of me, if you wish.”

Brienne takes a breath. _Yes_ is pulling her mouth upward. “You would not be insincere about this.” It isn’t a question. Jaime shakes his head, a pleasant ache swelling his chest. His brave, lovely Brienne, believing his love at last. 

He thinks: I have done my best to be a man worthy of belief. 

“I will marry you,” says Brienne slowly, as though not entirely certain that the voice speaking is hers. What highborn woman ever thought to choose the man she marries? “I will. On Tarth, when we return. And —” 

Jaime kisses her, to drunken whoops from men he had not realized were watching. Her mouth is warm on his, her breath sweet when she smiles more broadly than he’s ever seen. She threads a shaky hand through his hair and embraces him. 

“It is the honor of my life to love you,” Jaime says in her ear. 

“I have said yes already,” she mutters, “there’s no need for flattery.”

But she is smiling.

* * *

When the feast starts to sputter, Jaime stands and tugs Brienne toward the door. He has a mind to find some warm, dark corner of the castle and do unspeakable things, ideally while speaking enthusiastically about those things. If the heat in Brienne’s gaze is any indication, she wants the same. 

The crowd, somewhat sparse to begin with, has thinned considerably; Jaime spotted Loras Tyrell slipping away with some blond-haired wildling boy an hour ago. Though his heart is still buoyant with relief and joy — Brienne of Tarth is to be his _wife_ — he feels compelled to make haste; if he should stop his push, his rampage forward, grief’s slimy fingers will wrench him backward. 

After all, it was less than two weeks ago that he knelt over the small body and touched his fingertips to the cooling blood — yes, it is time to go. There is nothing like a party nearing its end to stir up black thoughts. 

Brienne herself leads him to the massive oak-and-iron doors, only to pause at a commotion from the dais. 

Arya Stark is on her feet, face white beneath a flush of anger. She is standing protectively in front of Bran, one hand on her slender sword, shouting at a group of Others trying to push past. Their chattering voices rise above hers; their long fingers point insistently at Bran, who could not appear less concerned if he were asleep. Jon Snow appears and says something urgently to Arya, who shoves him aside and draws her sword. It flashes once, pricking the skin of the closest Other.

The remaining feasters cannot decide whether to storm the dais or flee. Jaime has some dim inclination that guest right might apply: but he is a Lannister, and lions have a documented distaste for table manners.

Widow’s Wail leaps to his hand. He springs onto one of the long tables, trying to rally the — drunken, weary — men. Brienne bellows a warning that he is in no mood to heed. The Others at the dais whirl, weapons flashing.

“ _Peace_ ,” shouts Daenerys. Her voice cuts like a knife through the clamor; even the Others freeze in place. Jaime will remember that, later: the way she wielded peace as a blade. 

Daenerys holds up a hand to the Others: give us a moment. She turns and starts speaking rapidly to Jon, who answers back very unlike a man in deference to his queen. 

“Get down,” hisses Brienne, and Jaime hops somewhat sheepishly from the table. Gods, but he had wanted a fight. How not? Tommen ought to have been at this feast.

“Keep your head. You would destroy the truce before it begins,” says Brienne.

“You need trust for a truce.” But she is right. Jaime’s heart thuds: he is thirsty for an excuse.

On the dais, Arya exchanges harsh words with one of the Others, shaking her head sharply several times. Jaime doubts they understand each other. Then Bran speaks up, nodding at Daenerys and putting a hand on Arya’s arm. Arya’s face wavers and Sansa, pressed against the wall behind them, cries out. 

Someone calls out: “The fuck is going on?”

The sentiment echoes. 

“A marriage should come with a dowry,” announces Bran, almost cheerfully. His voice cracks: not with fear, but with the end of boyhood. “But we have little to offer. My life will do.”

Jaime frowns, exchanges a glance with Brienne. Little Rickon, hands buried in his direwolf’s inky fur, screams in protest.

“You knew!” Arya’s voice pitches high, accusing Jon and Daenerys. “You knew what they wanted to do to him.”

Jon clenches a fist. “Arya...” 

“Surely not,” whispers Brienne.

“It is the way to do it, Arya.” Bran smiles gently. He no longer speaks like a boy of ten. “My sight, my memories: these are the last traces of the children that walk these lands. To us, the children of the forest are legends; but to the Others, they are masters, cruel creators. And I am of their ilk.”

“But Euron was —"

“A means to an end.” Even now, the Others hiss at his name. “He promised to be their bridge, but he craved destruction. His magic might have razed the land the Others were born to take back.” Bran pauses. “And so might mine.”

“He’s your brother,” says Arya to Jon, but it is no longer a protest, only a lament. 

Bran tilts his head. “Almost.”

Jon blinks, nods, gives the word.

Jaime studies Daenerys, a silver shard among the shadowy Stark siblings. He had thought her need to secure the Starks’ loyalty might move her to intervene, but she watches, expressionless, while Sansa flings her arms around Bran, smooths his hair. Arya hurls obscenities at Jon: how could you? Father would hate you forever! 

Jaime wonders if that is true.

Jon turns his head and orders someone to restrain his sister. 

Daenerys stays silent. Nothing will get in the way of her peace; not now. 

No one in the crowd protests as Jon’s bride gathers Bran in her arms and walks him back to the godswood, to the weirwood tree. There is no one left who will speak for the life of a boy against the end of a war. 

It is in Jaime to object; he is thinking of how Bran weighed nothing at all in his arms. But he also remembers: _I could make you do it, you know. Jump. If I wanted._

He looks to Brienne. She’s a hand to her mouth, the other fluttering by her side as though searching for Podrick’s shaggy head. Their eyes meet; Jaime raises a brow expectantly. 

“It can’t all be for naught,” she whispers, bargaining. “There is nothing...nothing worse than meaningless death.” 

Surely most anything is a better death than the one Jaime tried to inflict on Bran, so long ago. When he shoved on that rabbit-quick heartbeat, he had done it to keep his head and Cersei’s off a pike. To stop Robert slaughtering the Lannister bastards and starting a war. In the end, he only delayed the war to come.

Jon’s bride lays Bran across the weirwood’s roots. She pulls a long, shimmering knife; Bran will be able to see his own warped reflection in the moment of death.

Speak now, Kingslayer. Draw your sword; you were quick enough to do it a moment ago. He is ten, eleven, Tommen’s age. Tommen, who will have died for nothing if the war does not end. 

Tommen, who died for nothing anyway. 

The Others bow their heads. The bride places the gun against Bran’s neck. 

“Stop,” says Jaime, barely believing the words out of his own mouth. Every eye swings to him; he hears Brienne’s sharp intake of breath. He tilts his chin and summons every ounce of Lord Lannister arrogance he can muster. “By the gods, stop this. He’s a child.”

The Others pause. Bran, prone among the roots, says, “Many more children will die if this war does not end. My magic will be released into the world when I die, and bless this truce. You have my thanks, ser, but let it be.” 

“There must be another way.” Brienne steps forward. She nods at Jaime, mouth set in a stubborn line. “There is always another way.” 

“Send him away. Delegitimize him, send him to Dorne, or Essos. What harm can one boy with no house do so far from here?” The knife still hovers near Bran’s throat, but some of the Others are chittering among themselves. Jaime’s stump arm twinges; every moment that passes could breathe life into the dying war. 

Jon materializes near the weirwood, hope creeping across his face. Arya’s words, true or not, must be knocking around his head. Ghost is a white specter at his side.

“Send him to Oldtown.” Samwell Tarly looks as though he may soil his trousers, but he pushes forward and addresses Jon. “The maesters will never allow magic to fester there. Maesters have no sworn swords, no allegiances, no enemies.”

Jon relays this to the Others, who confer among themselves, making broad gestures that set their clothing to rippling, now cobalt blue, now black. Jaime senses a thrum of energy among them; they are not as eager to sacrifice a child as he was wont to believe. One of them points to Sam, who appears at risk of melting into his boots. Perhaps the Others are saying, If that is the boy’s future, then we have naught to worry about. Or maybe they remember that Sam slew one of them beyond the Wall.

Wind whips through the godswood, slicing through all of Jaime’s furs and chilling his bones. The Others step back; Jon’s bride nods. 

Jon turns to the silent crowd and says, “They’ve agreed. Bran will become Brandon Snow, and study in Oldtown to become a maester. He will not travel north of the Neck for the rest of his days.” He pauses, eyes flitting, probably searching for Daenerys. “The treaty will need amending.”

Bran’s mouth gapes wide. A ribbon of blood slides down his neck. From the look on his face, you might think he could feel scarlet tears welling in his eyes, his ears. Realization strikes Jaime across the ears: Bran, broken, less human by the day, had hoped to die. Perhaps he orchestrated it this way. He would not have had to tug on many strings. Even now, he might slide into the nearest ice block of a brain and turn those shimmering knives toward his skin. But he is too busy gawping at Jaime to do anything but hang limply as Jon scoops him away from the weirwood’s reaching fingers. 

Jaime could not have maimed him more adroitly with a rusty wood saw, but the boy will live.

“I hope,” he says to Tyrion later. His brother had missed the excitement; the war was reborn and murdered while he brooded in the old maester’s tower, thumbing through scorched books. “It may be that he finds someone to slip poison in his next meal, but that will be no fault of mine.”

“Gods, Jaime, how many times will you cripple the boy?” Tyrion has a hand on a mostly intact volume of a tome so thick Jaime doesn’t bother trying to parse its thoroughly punctuated title. 

“The first time is the hardest.” Jaime manages a threadbare smile. “I cannot believe you missed the feast, brother. It is most unlike you to abstain from revelry.”

“I find I have little taste for merrymaking these days. My task is not yet finished, you know. Not until Daenerys sits her throne.”

Jaime groans, rising from the desk chair opposite Tyrion and going to stare out the dark window. Men are such great thundering fools. “Before she died, Genna told me that you were our father’s true son. Can you believe I badly wanted to prove her wrong? She was right, of course — women often are. I intend to make off with mine as soon as the roads allow. I recommend you do the same.”

“I tried that once, or have you forgotten?” Tyrion sounds more weary than angry. It has been so many years since Tysha; anger fades, but time nurtures exhaustion. 

They both know Tyrion won’t turn back now. If it isn’t loyalty that keeps him at the Dragon Queen’s side — and Jaime suspects it is not — then it is ambition, rapacity. Just a step farther. Surely the ice will hold: Tyrion is a small man, after all.

“Tread carefully, Tyrion,” says Jaime, turning back to the room to find his brother observing him. “Death by fire is a cruel thing.”

Tyrion pastes on a grin. “It may be that dragonfire is the only thing that can unthaw my cock when this blasted winter ends. Not all of us have been so...active as you.” 

Tyrion holds out a hand. Jaime shakes it, then pulls him into a rough embrace. 

“I will keep Tarth in her good graces, if I can,” says Tyrion thickly. “Brienne and the Evenstar will need to bend the knee.”

“I’m sending what is left of our forces to clear the island of Aegon’s men. As for fealty, it is not mine to swear, but I will speak to Brienne.”

“So you are really going with her.” Tyrion steps back, tilting his head up at Jaime. His mismatched eyes are alight with an old curiosity. 

“I asked for her hand. She said yes.”

“Mother’s mercy.” Tyrion’s laugh is cutting, but not cruel. “You always did like the strange ones, Jaime. Pity we are disinherited; this is just the sort of politic match Father always wanted for you.”

“Quiet, before I change my mind.” The last thing he needs his Tywin Lannister’s rotting stink perfuming his bed chamber.

Tyrion’s grin slips. In a hushed voice, as though they are telling ghost stories: “What of Cersei?” 

He could mean almost anything by this, but Jaime only says, “I will see to her.”

* * *

Jaime is tired when he returns to the guest house, but not too tired to slip his hand beneath Brienne’s smallclothes and swallow her sweet little gasps as he finds that tender place inside her. When it is done he licks his fingers and sinks into bed beside her.

“You are satisfied with yourself,” Brienne tells his smirk.

It widens. “Not nearly so satisfied as you, sweetling.”

She swats at him, but smiles instead of flushing. Jaime kisses her fingers and slides into the crook of her body, dropping his head against her chest. 

She says what he has been afraid to say: “It’s over.” 

He half expects the walls to collapse inward, Others pouring into the castle, the storm raging anew. The best way to destroy peace is to acknowledge it. 

But nothing changes; Brienne’s heart thuds on as it always has.

“I never expected to make it this far,” admits Jaime. He means the end of the war. He means sleeping beside the woman he loves.

“You did it on your own terms. It’s what you always wanted.” 

“Mayhaps I wanted too much.” He shifts to meet her eyes. Many nights they had lain awake, murmuring about a life on Tarth: watching Pod and Tommen grow into men, teaching them to sail, dancing together at balls. 

You can have some, but not all of what you wish for. 

Tommen is just an ash pile on the ground, now. A crown rusting in the snow. A dream of spring and golden sunlight. Jaime’s boy, the one he loved too hard and too late.

Brienne smooths his hair and says, “We can rest now. It is done.”

Jaime thinks: almost.

When they wake, the sky is blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> attentive readers will notice the glaring 21/22 chapter label at the top of this page. yes, this is the penultimate entry in this story, which i think i started working on almost a year ago. wow? this chapter is a bit shorter than recent entries have been; it's the falling action before the falling action. I'm expecting that the final chapter will be pretty long. 
> 
> also, I'm not sure if this is clear or not in the text, but a big reason on chooses to marry himself off and disappear into the far north is because he's pissing his pants at bran's reveal that he's actually the male targaryen heir to the throne. i grappled with whether or not to have jaime and the others find out this information (challenges of having only one pov — i get you now, grrm) but eventually decided that i don't think jon and and dany would have any interest in making this information known. jon doesn't want the throne, and dany certainly doesn't need another challenger. i imagine their conversation went something like:
> 
> dany: you could leave :)  
> jon: yeah i would love that

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, y'all! the title for this one is directly lifted from a tchaikovsky piece of the same name, which i highly recommend listening to. very brooding. next chapter: brienne is pissed, jaime is in the driver's seat, is it getting hot in here?, and daven lannister gets hitched.


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